Street photographer Stephan Bartholomeus from 1000 Streets Collective speaks about their first ever gallery
“The most exciting thing in street photography is looking for moments and capturing them,” says Stephan Bartholomeus, a Brussels-based street photographer and co-founder of the “1000 Streets Collective.” An organization with the goal of hosting an annual gallery, starting with its first one in June 2024 which will showcase Belgium-based street photographers.
By Vicente Torre
Not many people think of street photography when it comes to an artistic practice, they often imagine painting, drawing, sculpting, singing etc. Photography oftentimes gets overlooked as an artform. Though for people like Stephan it is an everyday part of his life, as well as a way for him to creatively express himself.
“So I really like what you can do with the light on the street.” Stephan exclaimed enthusiastically when asked about his creative style. Stephan tends to use light and color to shape his photographs. This approach is new to Stephan, who has been a photographer for most of his life, yet only dove into the world of street photography five years ago. Stephan claims to enjoy many things about street photography. He said that sometimes he walks up to fifteen kilometers on a nice day taking photos, so it keeps him very active. He also said one of the benefits for him was getting out of his comfort zone. Noting that when starting out in street photography people sometimes feel sort of shy and awkward, but the task at hand forces them to interact with people. If there is no interaction with your subjects, there are no photos.
The main benefit of his involvement in street photography seems to be the community he has gained. For the past two years, Stephan has played a huge role as co-founder of the “1000 streets” photography collective. This collective currently consists of sixteen core members and was founded by Bartholomeus and Antoine Deckers.
Stephan and the core members also play a huge role in interacting with the street photography community in Belgium. “1000 streets’’ hosts a photo walk once a month that anyone interested in joining the community can attend. It is important to note that although there can only be twenty core members of the collective, anyone can join the community as a regular member. Stephan and Antoine are advocates of building a strong community for street photographers in Belgium, since there are a number of places in Europe such as Paris and London which have much more representation both online and offline.
When asked what he thought about street photographers including unsuspecting strangers in some of their images, he said “If you’re in a public space, you can shoot what you want.” In response to a question about confrontations, he said “If someone is asking you, Hey, are you shooting me? I say ‘yes’ But I’m a street photographer. Then I show them my Instagram account to give context to what I’m doing. If they prefer that I delete it, I delete it immediately. And I’ve never had that problem. People sometimes say, oh, that’s nice. And sometimes they even ask me if I can email them the photo.”
There is an ongoing debate about street photography and its ethics, especially in regard to having strangers in your photos. Luckily, there are people like Stephan who turn confrontation into education and represent the rapidly growing community in a positive light.
Another topic covered in the interview was the possibility of people becoming less interested in street photography with the rapid approach of the age of AI images, and their shrinking attention spans. Surprisingly, Stephan said in response “Well, I’m optimistic about that, because if I see what’s going on now compared to ten or fifteen years ago, I have the feeling that it’s coming back. There’s kind of a rise in the popularity of street photography. For example, ten to fifteen years ago, I didn’t see very much activity. But now, I think it’s a discipline that it’s grown and you can’t really replace it with anything else.”
With the insights gathered from Stephan, It is safe to say that street photography has a bright future. Over the next decade, a surge of remarkable work is anticipated to emerge from Belgium, propelled by the groups like the 1000 Streets Collective and artists like Stephan.
Author and editor
Vicente Torre
