Eddy Van Gestel
As a young photographer, now almost four decades ago, Eddy Van Gestel set off for Africa. His love for the continent and his great passion for art and photography came together there, symbiotically; after all this time, that symbiosis has never lost its power. After a long career in publishing, he decided in 2010 to become a full-time photographer. He has since moved away from wildlife and ethnic photography and today is one of the most influential art photographers of his generation. With Africa as his constant backdrop and the African people as principal characters.
He loves to observe, sometimes for hours at a time, people’s behaviour, how colour relates to texture, how structures visually gain or lose strength depending on the light they catch. How similar are the lines that surround us, how the curves of a beautiful body echo the rolling of the sands in the desert, the waves of the sea, a flag in the wind. How associations arise in his brain that he often has no explanation for. You could call all this INPUT. And how differently that input behaves when transposed to a slightly different, parallel universe and time, to a different logic. Safe and recognisable enough to feel comfortable and yet with the certainty that a trompe l’oeil is somehow fooling you. He loves it, because it makes you think, makes you tilt your head slightly, makes you look again, scrutinising.
Eddy Van Gestel lives and works in Kenya, far from the pressure and the rat race, on the island of LAMU, where he finds peace and inspiration for his work.
Although Eddy attaches great importance to beauty, the artistic depth in his latest series is more pronounced. His work is more than a photographic representation of reality; his images possess a deeper dimension. “I do not feel the need to explain, to confuse, or to provoke. For me, art must be understandable. Above all, I want to evoke emotions; to move, touch, or inspire the viewer. My photographs tell a story of an old or recent past, show a culture in transition, or cast a glance toward the future. A future in which the African woman steps into the foreground.”
From the moment the airplane doors opened, Eddy Van Gestel knew: in Africa, I am home. In 2009, he sold his publishing house and safari business to devote himself entirely to his two great loves: the African continent and photography. Initially as a nature photographer, now as an advocate of feminine beauty.
As a child, Eddy Van Gestel eagerly anticipated the annual family trips to the Belgian coast. It was not so much the beach umbrellas or sandcastles that made his heart race, but the missionary exhibitions of the White Fathers. Young Eddy was fascinated by the objects they sold and could listen for hours to stories of Stanley and Livingstone. When he saw Sydney Pollack’s classic Out of Africa in 1986, he was completely captivated: “That film was an absolute masterpiece, both cinematically and in content. The nature scenes remain unparalleled to this day. When I walked out of the cinema, I knew: I am going there as soon as possible, I have to go there.”
A continent in rapid transformation
Africa became Eddy’s second home, quite literally, as the photographer lives there for nearly six months a year, mainly in Kenya. “For a long time, I thought: Africa will never change. No matter how long I was away, time seemed to stand still. And I liked that. I did not want my Africa to change. The rest of the world was evolving at high speed, and then I would arrive in Africa and it felt as though I had stepped into a time machine. Until about six or seven years ago: that was when I suddenly noticed that my beloved continent was indeed undergoing change.”
To explain this phenomenon, he adopts a global perspective: “The world has left behind a heavy colonial legacy in Africa. The colonizing countries long struggled with a sense of guilt about the mess they had left behind, to the point that it was almost considered inappropriate to return and engage in business there. That began to shift when China rediscovered Africa as an immensely interesting continent, because of its oil, ores, minerals, and food resources. Since then, developments have accelerated rapidly. Economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is approaching 10 percent. A new generation of Black Africans is rising and proving that long-term economic growth can be sustainable.”
