Corpus Christi

One Sunday morning in June I was moving to another flat. The car was stuffed with my belongings up to the roof, fortunately I put the bag with a camera close to me. When we stopped by the red lights on the junction at Porte de Namur I noticed the Corpus Christi procession. On the spur of the moment I decided to jump off the car and take a few pictures. I asked my friend whether he had a driving licence or at least could drive a car. He could not but I decided to get out anyway. As the shots were taken while I was running around the people most of them were too blurred. I still managed to get back to the car before the lights changed into green. The camera was a Canon A1 and the film Kodak 400TX.

Rzeszów, Poland B. Between 6.30 and 10.00 a.m.

Rzeszów is a small town in the far East Poland, the so-called "Poland B" (as opposed to the western part of Poland which is supposed to be better developed). I know this city from the 1980s and when I went back there in August 2006 I was astonished to see that apart from new shop windows the atmosphere and people had not changed at all. The pictures were taken with a PentaconSix on the HP5. Unfortunately, I lost a couple of good images as the camera did not function well and some of the images got superimposed on one another on a couple of films. This is what has survived.

Half Marathon in June

One weekend in June I happened to watch the half marathon in Brussels. My idea was to show it without actually photographing the participants run.

Warriors

Julian (6th dan)


Juan-Pablo (4th dan)


Anne (2nd dan)

Atelier 340

Exhibition of works and performances by students of fine arts in the Atelier 340 Gallery, Jette, Brussels.

Festival ceskeho a slovenskeho divadla w Lucemburku

A remarkable day in Luxembourg. I was taken by a friend of mine to see a show of Czech and Slovak theatres and naturally I took a camera - just in case. The room at the theatre was very dark, only the scene was spot-lighted. I thought the pictures would never come out in such conditions but eventually I found out that this camera does wonders! Only that when I took the first picture the shutter sounded like a bomb explosion and everybody around looked at me. After the third they did not care, so I was able to shoot a couple more. The camera was a Hasselblad 500CM and the negative was a HP5. The two theatre groups are the Divadelni Atelier Vaclava Martince from Praha and the BANDA (Benesovske Amaterske Nezavisle Divadlo Autorske) from Benesov in CZ.

Brussels Jazz Marathon

Jazz in Brussels. Each year the city organises a jazz festival - a really huge venue! There is one big scene at the Grote Markt and a number of smaller gigs in various bars. The big concerts at the main market place and at the St. Catherine are simply boring because they are too big. It is much better to go down the pub and get drunk while listening to small jazz groups. But it is even better just to get drunk basically anywhere. Taking advantage of the fact that my then ex-girlfriend went away for the weekend, I invited a good friend of mine to stay over and we started enjoying Belgian beers on Friday night. Obviously we enjoyed them a lot and the very next morning we decided to get up very early and go for breakfast in the city centre. Around 1 p.m. we arrived in Porte de Namur, still suffering from hangover and we found the best jazz venue of the whole festival: two musicians playing live in the street. Drunk as I was, I decided to find an unusual angle for the images and here's the result. Then we finally had breakfast.

Brussels in Black and White.

It is a fantastic city. I love its buidlings, its pubs and cafes, I love its streets, the metro and the hustle and bustle of little market places. I love its boulangeries, patissieries and its tables du pain. I love its crowds of people, whether they run to work, shop or just take a break in small caffeterias. I love the way the walk, they talk, they drink and smoke, I love each of their gestures. I just love watching them...in black and white.