Karel Fonteyne

The fingerprint of a child’s soul is the emotional imprint of his early reactions on impressions and experiences. We are who we were.
"As a young boy I used to wonder through the twilight of the woods, strange feelings slipped into my veins as the universe made me a witness of what one can’t tell nor describe.I loved to build small camps with branches and cover them with dried grass; sitting inside gave me a very strong attachment to nature: Sounds, smells and movement covered me with a coat of inner silence and frozen motion; it was like entering another dimension, cuddling loneliness. " Fonteyne started to read, especially the Latin American writers Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Octavio Paz, Rubem Fonseca, Julio Cortázar etc., as they were very connected to his way of thinking.More attracted by the inner than the outside world, and after having seen movies from Bergman, Fellini and in particular ‘Fuglane’ by Tarjei Vesaas which impressed him because of the incredible pictorial description of the inner lives of the three main protagonists and the nature surrounding them, he started to photograph. The ingredients of his photographs are quite dark: the unknown loneliness and the mysteries of the puzzle of life are never far away, Fonteyne likes to combine things which have nothing in common and gives these an unexpected meaning and direction. "I usualy don't photograph what I see but how my mind reflects it".

— Karel Fonteyne