'I took a photo that is special to me in 1989 on a Sunday morning in a small provincial town. Autumn was exhausted and in my camera bag were a few pellicules and a camera with my date of birth as the year of manufacture. Paul Delvaux, the almost blind artist, was waiting for me.
Did I want whisky? I nodded and drank it for the first time: Glenfiddeh, single malt, twelve years old. A Sunday ritual for the old painter, a revelation for me, a young photographer. It was only these alcohols that calmed my nerves, so that I dared to aim my Asahi Pentax Spotmatic at the gray head of the surrealist.
Through the dark viewfinder I saw how the hazy crystals of the ground glass slowly came into focus on the glassy eyes of the artist. I saw his head slightly raised from his body, bent with age at an easel. His gaze through a window into a garden where an eternal mist hung through his eyes. On the table is his empty glass with a few drops of Scotch whiskey still on the inside.
And in the blurred background his great love, confined to bed due to her illness, and a checked bedspread. Her head bent towards us so as not to miss the spectacle. On the wall above her there is a dark one painting with a naked kneeling woman, the angel who would soon come for her. The sound of the shutter's metal guillotine broke the silence.
A week later, the artist stroked the baryta print with the tips of his fingers. “Ca me semble une belle photo,” he said. It was a blind man who sent the young dog into the world.'
Name: Stephan Vanfleteren (1969)
Place of residence: Vilvoorde
Portfolio: De Morgen, Paris Match, Die Zeit, Humo, Volkskrant
Info: www.stephanvanfleteren.com
