@woutervandevoorde - Tumblr Blog

Today I photographed this little scale model I made back in 2004.

Inside an old fish tank I reconstructed the forest of my paternal grandparents. As this forest is adjacent to my parents’ house, throughout my childhood I built camps, bunkers, raced around on my pushbike and climbed trees in here. The swimming pool was filled with leaf litter for most of the year so swimming was a very rare occurrence. I enjoyed a privileged childhood growing up having access to a magical place like this.

When my grandfather passed away in 2003 I felt the need to preserve this place for memory’s sake. A few years after his passing the house and forest were sold.

#wouter van de voorde #belgium #scale model

The old majestic blast furnace in Charleroi yesterday.

woutervandevoorde

Good to be back in this location over the past couple of days. This picture was from my visit three years ago in 2019. Sad to see a lot of this site had been cleared. I suppose that makes the work I shot in 2019 even more valuable.

#Belgium #charleroi #darkroom #wouter van de voorde

Looking at birds at a local cemetery.

#wouter van de voorde #belgium

There is a lot going on in this little house. Countless old CRT television, plaster figurines of composers, horses and religious figurines in every room. The amalgam of objects littered throughout this little house is distinctly European. This first visit was just a quick exploration. I will go back a handful of times during my time here to soak in as much is possible and try to tell the story of this discarded home.

My mother parked her car in front of the driveway so I could sneak in relatively unseen, although it was the middle of the day and this place is located along a very busy road. I should have made a photo from inside the house of my mum sitting in the car.

#wouter van de voorde #belgium

Had this one sitting in my drafts for a few years, must have been 2016 or 2017.

When we were in North Queensland a couple of months ago I was really drawn to these monstera like vines which covered entire trees. The tree pictured in this photograph was sitting on the boundary of a truck scrapping yard. I first discovered this location sometime after lunch as I was heading into town to buy food, I made a few images and decided to return to this same spot the next day around sunrise.

#wouter van de voorde

Last night I snuck back inside this old little farm house in the street of my parents. Most of the roof had collapsed since I last visited this place in 2019.

A section of wall had fallen over and exposed a wardrobe with some old petticoats hanging inside. Since the back of the wardrobe had also come down I had to crawl through in between the old dusty coats to get inside the house, a rather dramatic entrance.

I don't remember ever going inside the basement of this place previously. To my surprise the basement was still in decent condition, the barrel vaulted ceiling intact. On the shelves there were about a dozen of preserved produce some which seemed to contain some horrific looking meats which had probably been there since the eighties.

Hey y'all. I'm currently visiting my family in Belgium and decided to revive my old Tumblr.

This morning I witnessed a clattering of jackdaws having a frolic across the house of my parents. Just like at home in Australia I am triggered by our feathered friends. The similarity of this scene to birds I photographed in Australia is remarkable.

It is lovely yet strange to visit my folks again after the covid years.