Artist and photographer from Antwerp, Belgium
conceptual artist and photographer, Royal Antwerp academy for Fine Art, in situ3, site specific art, installations, drawings and paintings
Trying to fit in society and work in the industry lasted for only 10 years. I decided to follow my heart and intuition: art. I enrolled at the Royal Academy of Antwerp to study arts and site specific art. This period lasted for 5 years, after studying there I transformed more and more to photography as a means of expression. I studied for a couple of years in Leuven Academy analog film photography and this was really an amazing eye-opener.
To find the beauty in emerging patterns, of dreams, of visions, of experience, in music, all must have underlying mathematical pureness. An exploration of the ordinary, in simple movement, shapes, pen or brush strokes and I like how spontaneity and intuition makes up quasi-random coincidences that have higher and deeper meanings. Sometimes it takes ages to be able to see them.
My life so far is not the been the most straightforward trajectory. I originate from an engineering background. I graduated at the age of 24 from Leuven University with a degree of civil engineering in construction.
I think for a long while I have sworn to stay with film photography. But when even some of my “heroes” in film photography, like Stephan Vanfleteren and Magnum member Carl De Keyzer, started to go digital, it became harder to keep up with all the actual work to manually process film photography, not to mention the environmental footprint of the products used in the chemical process, and finally I switched to more and more using my digital camera, leaving my old Leica M3 and the Canon T90 to rest. I still do use them, but it is getting more and more rare. But there is some nostalgic air about it, it always remains the only “true” photography to me.
I have been active in Concert photography for magazines for a few years, and also did a lot of event shooting for various organisations the last ten years. It is only recent from during COVID I am mainly taking photographs for myself and for the art of them, the beauty.
For my digital shooting I am truly a Canon user. I shot most of my photographs with the Canon 7D and the amazing 6D. The full-frame 6D still is my camera of choice today, although I recently started using the Canon Rp system camera as well.
Some photos I make available for sale as prints that you can buy over the internet. I mainly use Etsy.com now as a sales channel.
Check it out at https://tristanphotography.etsy.com
So I want to thank all of you that choose to support me in my artwork through buying prints from me. I try to give the highest quality photography and the best print quality from Whitewall in Germany, mostly on heavier papers for conservation.
