Philippe Vandenbroeck (b. 1965) is a photographer, writer, and researcher based in Belgium. Trained as an engineer, philosopher, and urban planner, he has worked for three decades as a consultant, coach, and artist. He is a PhD researcher at Newrope, the Chair for Architecture and Urban Transformation at ETH Zürich.
He is self-taught and has honed his photographic practice through sustained mentorship by Lorenzo Castore over more than a decade. He has attended masterclasses with Anders Petersen, Carl De Keyser, Mark Power, Claudine Doury, and Raymond Meeks.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Two motifs run through all of his work. One is ascending — a hymn, something coming into being, suffused with light. The other is descending — an elegy, something running its course, shadows deepening, colours flaring up for the last time or washing out into the monochromic.
His aspiration is that the act of photography embody a simple gesture: not the closing of a hand, but the opening of one.
He is drawn to what the Germans call 'Endzeitlichkeit', an autumnal mood of resignation and attentiveness in the face of endings. Our era feels like fin-de-siècle Vienna or Paris in the 1780s: something new announcing itself, not yet legible, projected through the spectre of doom. Yet this febrile interval also carries beauty. His work tries to hold both.
