WIM DE SCHAMPELAERE (BE 1963)
As many a man
before him, Wim De Schamphelaere began his professional life in a field alien
to the arts, before applying his acumen and expertise to his African project
and the making of photographs. Trained as an engineer in biochemistry and
physics, after an early career in the motor industry, he started Belgians first
digital printing company, opting out of active participation in the Company at
some point. One day, he found himself in Madagascar, making his way up river from
the coast in a dugout canoe.
Led by curiosity of different way of life and attracted to the people he met, De Schamphelaere stayed with remote communities, eventually overcoming deep-running distrust to a lone white man with unclear motives. This involved a good amount of non-verbal communication. The level of his involvement shows in the b&w work of that period, which breaths the spirit of a Sebastião Salgado. Trust and mutual respect, are clearly the prerequisite also to the large scale portraits, when ever larger groups of people with little prior experience with the medium, felt obliged to stand before the camera.
When De Schamphelaere gathered the village to make a last group photograph, the idea was to combine meaningful individual portraits of up to two hundred people. But, frustrated by the fact that he could not get entire community on one image, he applied his knowledge of digital technology to the scene. This adds up to a large image full of detail. Looking at it is like moving through a crowd - vagaries of perspective aside. In the meanwhile, De Schamphelaere has returned time and again with the prints to the people he has met. Part of the income from print sales in Europe will flow back to the communities in Africa, amounting to something of a one-man aid project.
This production by Wim De Schamphelaere is marked by adherence to a certain method, combining the systematic use of the camera to his topic. Systematic, structured, controlled application is familiar usage. But these images are not about architectures, or types, but portraits of people taking a break from a days work to offer their faces to us.
At the first viewing, McBride Fine Art invited Wim De Schamphelaere to a first solo show.
