Des choses jumelles entre autres

été 2025

#photographie #art #authorphotography #nattes #heure bleue #gantsmapa #œufs #portrait #newphotography

My wife walking across the central hall of château the Seneffe (1768), Seneffe, Belgium, 2025

The château de Seneffe was built between 1763 and 1768 by the architect Laurent-Benoît Dewez for Julien Depestre, a newly wealthy business man who became the Count of Seneffe and Turnhout in 1767. In the nineteenth century it became the property of the Philippson family, who restored the then almost a century old mannor and added modern amenities. After being confiscated during World War II, it served various purposes, including a school, before being abandoned and looted. It eventually was saved from demolition and restored as a museum in 1995. 

In the 18th century, wrought iron saw increased use in stairwell construction, particularly for balusters, alongside stone or wooden treads and handrails. The staircase of château the Seneffe is a fine example of this.

The façade of the dwelling, in Neo-Classical style, was built in blue stone that came from Feluy and Ecaussinnes. It’s courtyard is flanked by two long Palladian galleries with ionic columns, which house statues and vases sculpted in the antique style by Laurent Tamine, and lead to a chapel and living quarters, respectively.

#architecture #contemporaryart #building #chateau #blackandwhitephotography #blackandwhite #contrast #lightandshadow #everydaylife #bnw #bnwphotography
#contemporaryphotography #contemporaryart #architectlovers #newphotography #beautifullight #light #lightandshadows #monochrome #stairwell #staircase #wroughtiron #neoclassical #stairs

West facade of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Reims, Reims, France, 2021

A prominent example of High Gothic architecture, Reims Cathedral was built to replace an earlier church destroyed by fire in 1210. Although little damaged during the French Revolution, the present cathedral saw extensive restoration in the 19th century. However, it was severely damaged during World War I and the church was again restored in the 20th century.
Since the 1905 law on the separation of church and state, the cathedral has been owned by the French state, while the Catholic church has an agreement for its exclusive use. The French state pays for its restoration and upkeep.

The West facade, the entry to the cathedral, particularly glorifies royalty. Most of it was completed at the same time, giving it an unusual unity of style. It is harmonic and balanced, with two towers of equal height and three portals entering into the nave. The porches of the portals, with archivolts containing many sculptures, protrude from the main wall. The two bell towers were originally planned to have stone spires rising 120 m (390 ft) up in the air and making them three times taller than the nave, but they were never finished. Currently the towers measure 81 m (266 ft) in hight. Since 1027 all but seven of France's future kings were crowned at Reims Cathedral.

#church #cityphotography
#bnwphoto #bnwphotography #gothicarchitecture #gothic #gothicart #gothicstyle #blackandwhitephotography #architecture #archtecturephotography #city #bnwphotography #bnw #notredamereims #reims #tower #oldchurch #churchtowers

Crypt of the Cathedral of Saint-Cyr-and-Sainte-Julitte in Nevers, France, 2021

A crypt (from Latin crypta "vault") is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, sarcophagi or religious relics. First known in the early Christian period, in particular North Africa and Byzantium, churches were often built over a Mithraic temple, erected in classical antiquity by the worshippers of Mithras. Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation and communal ritual meals. Initiates called themselves syndexioi, those "united by the handshake". They met in an underground temple, the so called Mithraeum. This Mithraeum was either a natural cave or cavern, or a building imitating a cave, that was adopted by the early christian builders to serve as a crypt for the newly build church above.

In antiquity the Mithraeum primarily functioned as an area for initiation, into which the soul descends and exits. The Mithraeum itself was arranged as an "image of the universe". It is noticed by some researchers that this practice, especially in the context of mithraic iconography, seems to stem from the neoplatonic concept that the "running" of the sun from solstice to solstice is a parallel for the movement of the soul through the universe, from pre-existence, into the body, and then beyond the physical body into an afterlife.

#colorphotography #streetphotographymagazine #streetphotography #nevers #mithras #crypt #contemporaryphotography #romanesquearchitecture #architecturephotography #colorfull #church #amazingarchitecture #devine #light #heavenlylight #romanesque #solstice #architecture #colourphotpgraphy #cathedral #underground #romanesquechurh #colorful #humanity #door #stairs

Entrance of the synagogue of Ulm, Germany, 2023.

On March 2nd I posted a picture of the synagoge of Ulm designed by KSG architects (second photograph). Apart from being a synagoge the building also houses a Jewish community centre within its beautiful and extremely well proportioned modernist cubical structure.

A Mezuzah (Hebrew: מְזוּזָה "doorpost"; plural: מְזוּזוֹת‎ mezuzot) is a piece of parchment inscribed with specific Hebrew verses from the Torah, which Jewish followers of Rabbinical Judaism affix to the doorposts of their homes. In mainstream Rabbinic Judaism, a mezuzah must generally be placed at the entrance and in every doorway in the home, with some exceptions such as bathrooms (which are not a living space) and small closets.

In the Bible, the word mezuzah only refers to the two 'doorposts' or 'doorjambs' of a door, the upright posts on either side of it which support the lintel, and appears in various contexts unrelated to any religious commandment or parchment. The word later acquired the modern meaning of piece of parchment in post-Biblical Hebrew due to the Deuteronomy commandment requiring to write verses on doorposts.

#streetphotography #synagogue #contemporaryphotography #colorphotography #abstract #modernism #entrance #minimalism #modernarchitecture #arcitecture #newphotography #jewish #symmetry #corner #tempel #religion #temple #salomon #colorphotography #colourphotogrphy #doorway #corner #lightanddark #doorpost #starofdavid #windows #stars

188_Untitled 2023
Folded collage on Foam board
Colours are of photographs of skies.
Size: 28 x 19 cm
#contemporaryphotography #contemporaryart #newphotography #collage #collageart #lightandspace #interior #coloursofthesky #sold #torchgallery #popelcoumou

Time lapse photograph of the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, Maincy, France, 2021

Built between 1658 and 1661 for Nicolas Fouquet, Marquis de Belle Île, Viscount of Melun and Vaux, the superintendent of finances of Louis XIV, the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte was an influential work of architecture in mid-17th-century Europe. At Vaux-le-Vicomte, the architect Louis Le Vau, the landscape architect André Le Nôtre and the painter-decorator Charles Le Brun worked together on a large-scale project for the first time. Their collaboration marked the beginning of the Louis XIV style combining architecture, interior design and landscape design. The garden's pronounced visual axis is an example of this style.

When visitng the chateau last weekend it was turned into an enchanting and fairytale-like castle with thousands of sparkly and colorful lights. It is christmas festivities like these that add an excessive garishness or sentimentality to an already lavish but perfectly balanced piece of baroque architecture. This extra layer of extravagance enables one to get some idea of what it must have been like for people back in the day to lay eyes upon the chateau for the very first time during the festivities of its grand opening in 1661.

As so often is the case with my work, this photograph wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the inspiring music of Jean Michel Jarre, - especially his 45 minute track “Waiting for Cousteau” - and Nils Frahm - in particular his brilliant live performance of “Says”.

#colorphotography #movement #streetphotography #chateau #contemporaryart #movement #modernphotograph #colourphotography #amazing #moving #spacetime #minimalzine #baroquearchitecture #architecture #timelapse #architectureporn #colorful #vauxlevicomte #baroque #jeanmicheljarre #chateaudevauxlevicomte #nilsfrahm
#architecture #buildings #visitfrance

Rijnstraat 50 (Rhinestreet), opposite of Central Station The Hague, The Netherlands, 2024

Never underestimate the power of the ordinary, for it is the very foundation upon which the extraordinary is built. It is the stepping stone that carries us upwards, the canvas upon which we can paint our unique stories. The most profound joys in live can often be found in the simplest of moments. Embracing the beauty of the ordinary enables one to pause, breathe and appreciate the intricate details that often go unnoticed. Legacies are not limited to the realms of the extraordinary but are determined by the ordinary. It is in the familiarity and the simplicity of everyday moments where the beauty of ordinariness lies.

Although many like to interpret YOLO — you only live once — as an invitation to be careless and wasteful, I like to take it into the direction of existentialism: knowing that life has no meaning, what do we do with it? Once we accept the absurdity of life — that it has no predetermined meaning whatsoever — we are free to enjoy the little pleasures, joys and observations of daily life and give them our own meaning. Embracing the ordinary is living live to the fullest. Meaning reveals itself in the most insignificant moments, in the beauty of everyday life.

While waiting for tram 17 at one of the platforms of The Hague Central Station my eyes where met with this everyday scene right across the street, a seemingly insignificant play of light created by the evening sun projecting its last rays of the day through an empty government office building.

#architecture #contemporaryart #building #blackandwhitephotography #railroad #blackandwhite #contrast #lightandshadow #everydaylife #bnw #bnwphotography
#contemporaryphotography #contemporaryart #architectlovers #
#newphotography #beautifullight #light #lightandshadows #citysidewalk #monochrome #thehague #denhaag #denhaagcentraalstation

Containers at the thrift store Maasmechelen, Maasmechelen, Belgium, 2025

I believe in living a conscious life - or at least trying to. We are surrounded by stimuli influencing our every action, decision and thought. Mostly harmless, though some are designed with intent to manipulate and steer us in a certain direction. To blindly choose the door that is opened for us without reacting and reasoning, we live an unconscious life. We become the products of witty or clever manipulation. We follow the preachings of the loudest of most convincing politicians. We forego control and no longer see other choices available to us. It’s not possible of course to consider every stimulus. Though I believe we should at least try to consciously consider those that matter most in life.

Choice Theory, developed by psychiatrist William Glasser, states humans are motivated by a never-ending quest to satisfy 5 basic needs woven into our genes: to love and belong, to be powerful, to be free, to have fun and to survive. Specifically: Survival, belonging, power, freedom, and fun.

#streetphotography #contemporaryphotography #colorphotography #abstractphotography #window #minimalism #modernarchitecture #arcitecture #newphotography. #colorphotography #colourphotography #containers #choice

The synagogue of Ulm, Germany, 2023.

The Jewish symbol of the Star of David is used to create patterned windows in the limestone walls of the synagogue in Ulm, Germany. The town's original synagogue was torn down in 1938 as part of the Kristallnacht, or "night of broken glass", a series of attacks on Jewish community buildings within Nazi Germany. After World War II, a secular building was constructed where the old synagogue once stood. The current synagogue was reinstated right beside the site of its predecessor, in the middle of the square. It is as though the synagogue has taken a step forward from its former position, reclaiming its location. Both a synagogue and a Jewish community centre are contained within the cubical structure, which stands apart from the surrounding buildings. With no constructed borders, it stands abrupt and solitary recalling the building of the first temple.

When Solomon was building his temple to God, there was to be no noise. The stones were to be hewn in the quarry and brought to the place of construction. One of the stones was the largest stone ever taken out of a quarry. It’s a miracle of engineering that without the use of earth moving machinery, the Israelites were able to haul this enormous cubical stone to the temple site and set it in place. Once there, the builders weren’t sure what to do with it. It didn’t seem to fit anywhere in the blueprints for the temple. So, the builders pushed it over the temple mount into the Kidron Valley and there it lay. Later, they realized their mistake and hauled it back up again. They placed it in the foundation of the temple and it remains on the western wall of the temple mount to this day.

#streetphotography #synagogue #contemporaryphotography #colorphotography #abstractphotography #modernism #stars #window #windows #minimalism #modernarchitecture #arcitecture #newphotography #jewish #starofdavid #symmetry #corner #tempel #religion #temple #salomon #colorphotography #colourphotogrphy

Wouter in the central space of the steel maze on the old mining site C-mine, Genk, Belgium, 2022.

There’s an enduring stereotype that women tend to be worse than men when it comes to spatial reasoning. Mentally rotating an object, coming up with strategies to maneuver a big piece of furniture through small corridors, giving directions through a city, navigating through a maze, even reading a map ― basically anything that requires visualizing and manipulating 3D objects is thought, by some, not to be women’s strong suit. But there remain many holes in this popular narrative. Are women born different or brought up differently? Would it be possible to close the gap with training? Does the gap even really exist, or does it depend on the particular tests used to measure spatial cognition? Could it be that men and women tend to make use of different mental processes when solving spatial problems? Different ways of coming up with solutions for everyday spatial problems could explain why men seem to preform better in certain environments because for centuries much of the layout and mapping of the world surrounding us was - and to this day often still is - predominantly determinded by other men.

#contrast #shadowandlight #shadow #maze #labyrinth #streetphotographerscomunity #streetphotographer #streetphotography #contemporaryphotography #genk #gijsvanvaerenbergh #newphotography #gramoftheday #blackandwhitephoto #blackandwhitephotography #bnwphotography #blackandwhite #bnw #bnwphotography #bnw-addicted #longshadows

My dear wife Loes walking underneath a railroad bridge, Passage du Sablon, Metz, France, 2019.

Railroad bridges are usually made of either stone, concrete, steel or timber. Nearly all of the North American, South American and Asian railroad bridges were built of either steel or timber. In Europe, Russia and parts of China, timber was almost never used but concrete and stone were quite prevalent. The simple arch bridge not only is the most beautiful and spectacular of all railroad bridge types but it is also the most perfect form for handling the heavy load of a train since the materials in the bridge are always in compression. Arches are shaped into some form of either a semicircle or a segmental. If the arch is made of steel, hinges are often located at the two springing points to relieve temperature related expansion and contraction stresses.

#architecture #contemporaryart #building #blackandwhitephotography #railroad #bridge #metz #blackandwhite #contrast #lightandshadow #bnw #bnwphotography
#contemporaryphotography #contemporaryart #architectlovers #architectlovers #newphotography #beautifullight #light #lightandshadows #walking #citysidewalk #railroadbridge #monochrome

Parking garage Blue Boulevard (Quartier Blue), Hasselt, Belgium, 2023.

On my way to the museum Z33 in Hasselt my eyes were met by the circular lighting on the ceiling of the parking garage Blue Boulevard. A perfect opportunity for a time-lapse photograph.
Time-lapse photography has been one of my most favorite techniques ever since Art Academy. Back then digital camara’s ofcourse didn’t exist. The number of exposures on a roll of film was thirty-six and once it was developed, prints had to be made from the negatives using an enlarger in a darkroom. It meant you had to think ahead to accomplish something satisfying. You had to really focus on what you wanted to achieve. Analogue photography taught me to care about image composition at the moment of taking a picture. Digital photography creates very good quality photos and the process is fast, but sometimes it seems to lack soul because the making process in many instances takes place during post production. This means photographs become an imagined, constructed and at times often artificial reality rather than a realtime registration. Analogue photography taught me to value moments more, to shoot when they are worth it, to wait, to think ahead, to dedicate more effort and knowledge in to achieving what I want. With film photography, you really learn how movement and light work to produce an image, it’s a more hands on personal process.

The passing of time made visible through the physical act of taking a photograph whilst moving the camera has a beauty of its own, a purity. It’s like a lake utterly silent, subdued and stilled.

#colorphotography #streetphotography #contemporaryphotography #colorfull #hasselt #modernarchitecture #newphotography #architecture #colourphotpgraphy #timelapse #visithasselt #timelapsephotography #parkinggarage #movement #ufo #unidentifiedflyingobjects #buildingphotography #photographerspixelfed #light

Stairs leading from the terrace into the gardens, also known as a Grand Parterre, at the Château of Chantilly, France, 2016.

The Château of Chantilly and its gardens hold a special place in my heart. It is where I got down on my knees back in the summer of 1997, presented my then girlfriend with a ring and proposed. She accepted and we got married the two years later. And we still are.
The Château of Chantilly is comprised out of several buildings, each of which is a testament of its time. Yet, the total doesn’t look like a collection of individual buildings but rather presents itself as a ‘whole’. The entire building is a continuity of shape and form whilst at the same time it willingly expresses its collage nature, thus stating, however subtle, a distinction between old and new, between tragic past and majestic present, between that what ones was and things yet to come. The château embodies the passing of time in the most elegant way possible. Over the centuries constructing, destroying, reconstructing and remoddeling all seem to have constituted a building that couldn’t have been build in any otter way. In these turbulent and confusing times that to me somehow is a very comforting and hopeful thought.

#chateauchantilly #bnw_rose #stairs #blackandwhite #tv_simplicity #chateaudechantilly #blackandwhitephotography #contemporaryphotography #instatravel #bnwphotography #bnwmood #minimalzine #9minimal #gottolove_bnw #bnw_switzerland #7bnwcreation_1day #building #bnwphotography #stairsonstairsonstairs #contemporaryart #newphotography #gf_bnw #raw_bnw #city_in_bnw #buildings #bnw_epic #bnw_of_the_world #architecture

One more July 4th parade photo ... D.C. motorcycle police escort, a few minutes before the parade start. Full parade photo collection ... https://technewslitphoto.smugmug.com/DC-and-region/DC-palisades-4th-of-July-parade

#Photography #NewsPhotography #JulyFourth #Parade #WashingtonDC #Police #Motorcycles #BW #Grayscale