WORK IN PROGRESS... Brussels lies in one of the most polluted areas of Europe. Luckily there is a huge forest in its vicinity, a real lung which allows the inhabitants to breathe a little bit more freely. The Sonian forest dates back centuries. It has been going through profound modifications, reflecting the complex history and political events the area went through. The Sonian forest is a part of the Sylva Carbonara, a huge forest which covered the whole area between the Rhine and the North Sea and remained relatively intact until the 15th century, even though archeological findings dating from 3 000 to 2 200 BC have been found. Two tumuli, dating from the 1st century are still visible between the valley of ‘Enfants Noyés’ (Drowned Children) and the ‘Vuylbeek’. It belonged to the Dukes of Brabant who used the forest as a hunting ground from 1183 on. Several religious communities and monasteries established themselves in the forest: La Cambre, Groenendael, Val Duchesse, Rouge Cloître were importent religious hubs. During the 16th and 17th century the forest was massively depleted. A better management of the forest took place during the reign of the Archdukes Albert and Isabelle (1598 to 1691) and the Habsburg Kings of Austria (1714 to 1795). A large number of beech trees were planted which radically reduced the diversity found in the forest. Today they are still the main variety to be found, counting for about 80% and some of them being more than 200 years old. Under the French reign and with Napoleon Bonaparte 22 000 oaks were felled to build the fleet to invade England. At the end of the French reign (1794 to 1814) the Sonian Forest still extends over more than 10 000 hectares. Under Dutch administration, after 22 august 1822, the forest is bought by the Algemene Nederlandsche Maatschappij. At the 1830 revolution the company takes the name of Société Générale de Belgique which sells 60% of its property. The remaining 4 400 hectares are today’s forest. In 1843 the forest belongs to the Belgian state. After the regionalisation of Belgium, the forest is administered by the three regions: 56% by the Flanders, 38% by the Walloon region and 6% by the Brussels-Capital region. The 1 657 hectares managed by the Brussels-Capital region represent 10% of the total area of the Brussels region and 60% of its green areas open to the public. Extensive hunting has reduced the number of wildlife species to be found. The lynx, brown bear, auroch, wild boar, wolf, European badger have disappeared. But still about 132 species of birds and some 40 different vertebrates roam the forest, be it under heavy stress because of increasing human presence, the large amount of dogs and the fragmentation of the forest through highways criss-crossing it.

Photographs of architecture and urban planning (or the lack thereof) in Brussels in the early '80s, taken with a 4x5inch camera on Kodak Ekatachrome film

(work in progress)... Having been a battleground where foreign armies fought out ferocious power struggles, somehow shaped the complexity as well as the identity of the small Belgian territory. Created as a buffer state by a coalition of European powers which defeated Napoleon during the Waterloo battle in 1815, Belgium has indeed been fulfilling this role and, because of its inherent military weakness, has been invaded several times by foreign armies since. If the country was not an official buffer state before 1815, the area certainly turned out to be a playground for potentates' armies for much longer than that. The invasion with the longest lasting consequence undoubtedly has been by the legions of Julius Cesar, the end of their advance to the North drawing a rather precise border stretching along an East-West line through what today is called Belgium, resulting in two different linguistic influences who subsist to this day. For centuries those people with two different languages were time and again brought together or separated through political decisions, marriages, conquests. When language separated them, foreign politics united them. A seemingly permanent laboratory for the shaping of a country. Today the complexities of the Belgian political structure, generated in part by language differences brought by the Romans, seem to generate centripetal forces strong enough to create a separation. It is time to visit the battlegrounds.

In 2018, there were 995 demonstrations in the streets of Brussels, out of which 80% were not directly related to Belgian issues, maybe because Brussels is the most cosmopolitan city in the world after Dubai. 62% of those living in Brussels have foreign roots. Out of a population of 1.198.726 (239.408 more than in 2000), 65,2% are Belgian, 23% are European, and 11,8% non European. The elections of D. Trump, the Brexit, the Islamic State threats, the war in Ukraine, the emergence of totalitarianism in S.E.Asia, are just a few of scary symptoms of a rising intolerance and polarisation of society. Be it to question trade deals, employment, globalisation, foreign policy, immigration issues and in general everything which curtails civil society, the Belgian citizens express their democratic rights and resist. There is no real democracy without a vibrant opposition.

The carnival from Aalst exists officially only since 1923, a little more than 100 years, and was inscribed by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010. The carnival is known for mocking absolutely everything through a large amount of fleets and more than 2000 participants. The 2019 event triggered a controversy for allowing one fleet to mock the Jewish community. So much so that the carnival was removed from the UNESCO list and that the Israeli government requested that next year’s event be banned. The carnival took place nevertheless. Some of this year’s targets were the climate change student demonstrators, Boris Johnson and Brexit, the Belgian royal family, tennis woman Kim Clijsters… but also UNESCO and the Jewish community. The 2019 federal elections saw a surge of 17,5% in the city by the extreme right Vlaams Belang, reaching 25,4%, while the right wing nationalist NVA took a beating by loosing 10,6% but still maintaining 27,1% of the votes. If carnival is indeed just one day in the year when the weak can mock the powerful, it seems this is not the case in Aalst.

Take a small village in the Flanders. It is raining or foggy with near-freezing temperatures on muddy fields or on narrow paths in a forest growing on steep hills. Add a set of stairs and pitches of sand. Put a few wooden beams across the track. Now join a group with road bikes and start racing as hard as you can for one hour, trying to be the first to cross the finish line. You’ll be running, sliding in the mud, jumping the beams, climbing the stairs, carrying and even riding your bicycle. A crowd will gather along the track, drinking beer, cheering and supporting, waving banners with your name on if you are a strong rider. Covered in mud you’ll be trying to control your galloping heartbeat and try to find back your breath at the finish. Welcome to the cyclocross scene, the most unforgiving and exhausting thing you can do with a bicycle. The origins of the sport can be traced back to 1902, when a French soldier named Daniel Gousseau is credited with organising the first French National Championship Cyclocross race. Credit to the French. But the real cradle of cyclocross is in the lowlands stretching the Flanders and Holland. The current championship, first organised in 1950 by the UCI, the international body of cycling, has since been won 25 times by a Belgian. A Women Cyclocross Championship was initiated in 2000. While the basics of the sport have not changed a lot since 1950, its economical environment has seen drastic modifications. The races are now often broadcast on television because the 1-hour time span of a race fits the schedules well. Therefore sponsors get better exposure and consequently riders make more money. Gone are the times when competitors had to rely on their family members for technical assistance or make do with a bucket of hot water in a windy barn to get rid of the mud after the race. Today’s cyclocross stars like Wout Van Aert, Mathieu Vanderpoel or Tom Meeussen enjoy the comfort of lavish mobilhomes and are supported by a whole team of professional technicians. The pain in the muscles remains the same.

Protest against the annexation of Palestine by Israel attended by some 350 people at the Place du Trône.

The elections in Belgium turned out to show how both parts of the country have grown apart over the years. All the ‘traditional’ parties, be they centre, centre right, right or socialist have taken a blow and only the extreme rightist Vlaams Belang in the North and the extreme left PTB-Pvda in the South have made spectacular gains while the green parties have made less gains than expected, particularly in the Flanders. The result is that both sides of the country have further grown apart with a marked nationalist tendency in the North posing yet again a threat to the integrity of the country. Dialogue between both parts seem more difficult than ever.

A little more than 100 people demonstrate in front of the European Union buildings to protest the European imcreased border protections because of the situation in Turkey where thousands of migrants are massed at the border with Greece, after Turkey decided to let them pass to Europe.

Some 1200 people came together at the Mont des Arts to demonstrate in favour of equal opportunities, the end of discrimination and sexism, and the freedom of choice regarding the hijab after the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of a rule at the Francisco Ferrer School banning the use of the hijab.

To photograph a border… In this case, the one that separates Belgium from France. On an ordnance survey map or on Google Maps it is clearly defined by a line. It is the only place where it is. Once one gets there there is no line. The clues are more subtle: a slight change in the road surface, other kinds of road signs, different street furniture, and a modified territorial layout. Signs of a central power on a given territory. A border is nothing but the physical limit of power over a group of people. Despite the blessing that is the freedom of movement of people and goods in Europe, this physical limit discreetly remains. But what would happen if barriers were to rise again, if the borders were to close again, and customs posts dusted off? What if, as a photographer, inhabitant of a buffer state born from a battle lost by a Corsican in Waterloo two centuries ago, I was unable to go to the other side, to cross that line? I would not see much more than what I show in these photographs, my back to Belgium, facing France. No more, no less. A few derisory landmarks, in black and white, in color, a dot on the map, it does not matter. We may look, but this line does not scar this hill, this valley, this stream. Nature does not care about borders. But I would not have access to my neighbour in the same way anymore. By extension, the denial of passage toward the Other, access, openness to one another, has much deeper consequences than a line drawn through a grove. Borders diminish the mind, might they be on a single territory, between territories, social groups, or communities. The real walls, the real borders are there, between people.

When the “Calais Jungle” was dismantled a little more than one year ago, many migrants headed for Brussels to seek an alternative opportunity of crossing the Channel. They hang around the North Station in Brussels, mingling with refugees or refugee candidates to exchange information. Refugees wait for their status to be legalised, migrants wait before trying to board a truck heading for Great Britain, paying as much as 800€ to traffickers. As the Belgian authorities are reluctant to set up a proper infrastructure to host them, several networks of Belgian volunteers spontaneously took shape, among them “Plateforme Citoyenne de Soutien aux Réfugiés”, “Belgium Kitchen”, “United Stages” or informal groups of people, sometimes coming all the way from Liège or Mons. Through Facebook and a database of nearly 30000 addresses of Belgian citizens they provide the migrants and the refugees with food, clothing and information, and, in response to police raids rounding some of them up to send them back or elsewhere, organise and coordinate transportation to bring them to families or theatres hosting them for a few nights. Each night some 300 migrants and refugees are legally hosted. If it is indeed illegal for Belgian citizens to host people who are entered illegally in the country, it is also perfectly legal to host them for humanitarian reasons.

When the “Calais Jungle” was dismantled a little more than one year ago, many migrants headed for Brussels to seek an alternative opportunity of crossing the Channel. They hang around the North Station in Brussels, mingling with refugees or refugee candidates to exchange information. Refugees wait for their status to be legalised, migrants wait before trying to board a truck heading for Great Britain, paying as much as 800€ to traffickers. As the Belgian authorities are reluctant to set up a proper infrastructure to host them, several networks of Belgian volunteers spontaneously took shape, among them “Plateforme Citoyenne de Soutien aux Réfugiés”, “Belgium Kitchen”, “United Stages” or informal groups of people, sometimes coming all the way from Liège or Mons. Through Facebook and a database of nearly 30000 addresses of Belgian citizens they provide the migrants and the refugees with food, clothing and information, and, in response to police raids rounding some of them up to send them back or elsewhere, organise and coordinate transportation to bring them to families or theatres hosting them for a few nights. Each night some 300 migrants and refugees are legally hosted. If it is indeed illegal for Belgian citizens to host people who are entered illegally in the country, it is also perfectly legal to host them for humanitarian reasons.

More than 10000 people attended a protest against 'feminicide'. Thirty-two women were assassinated in 2018 in Belgium alone, proportionally twice the amount of France. The term 'feminicide' does not exist in the Belgian law.

Photographs taken while commuting in public transportation of Brussels.

More or less one of the first self-assigned stories I did: the three railway stations of Brussels in the late 70's.

Belgium: The Molenbeek Connection ​In connection with the IS claimed terrorist attacks in Paris of November 13th 2015, people were arrested and houses searched in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean. On March 22nd, a few days after the arrest, in Molenbeek, of Salah Abdeslam, one of the Paris attacks perpetrators, three new terrorist attacks took place at the airport and in a metro station, causing the death of at least 34 people. Molenbeek is a commune of Brussels with a large muslim population, and, combined with a high unemployment and a lack of proactivity from the authorities, has been a breeding ground for the radicalisation of a small fringe of its population. Despite the fact that the city has frequently been named in terrorist activities over the past years, a large majority of its Muslim population is fed up with being associated to its radical wing.

BELGIUM, Brussels. 8/03/2019: About 4000 women and a few men held a protest on Women's Day. A strike held by women was held on the same day.

The Belgian team taking part at the 2018 World Cup in Russia is ranked 3rd and among the favourites to win the tournament. Belgian supporters support them from home during the first match against Panama. Belgium won 3-0.

Following the spontaneous movement created by the 'Yellow Vests' in France who were initially demonstrating against high taxes on petrol, Belgian citizens, mainly in the French-speaking part, initiate a similar movement in their country. A clear distrust in the current political representation of the people added to the frustrations of decreasing living standards has brought thousands of people in France and in Belgium on the streets for the past three weeks.

Belgium abstained from signing the Katowice Climate Conference agreement in December 2018, partly because of the complex political configuration of a country with 4 (four!) environment ministers. This happened days after a 'Claim the Climate' demonstration gathered 70K people in the streets of Brussels on December 2nd 2018. Irritated by the neglecting attitude of the government, and inspired by the young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, a small group of second grade students, led by Anuna De Wever, Kyra Gantois, Adelaïde Charlier and others, started a series of weekly demonstrations with school-skipping students to put pressure on the Belgian Government to finally come up with a coherent and drastic plan to tackle climate issues. Gathering only a few thousand students on on its first time on January 10th, the numbers grew to 12K the second week, reached 35K one week after that and spread in several cities all over Belgium. The energetic presence of the students in the streets considerably raised climate change awareness with the public and, combined with the looming elections of May 2019, climate became probably the hottest topic on the political agenda.

The reputation damage the USA has suffered following the Trump presidency and his attitude following the outcome of the presidential elections is still difficult to assess. In this age of the Internet, television still has a significant impact on the perception of events by the populations outside of the USA.