Christopher de Béthune – Salad Days

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PORTFOLIO

14.08.2020

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Spending 65 days with his life-partner confined to a few square metres of space, the Belgian photographer discovered an unknown poetry to everyday life.

A sunny day in March. Light shines through the open window of an apartment in Schaerbeek, a neighbourhood in the Belgian metropolitan region. Jazz plays over a loudspeaker and a young couple playfully go about their work. While he browses through old negatives, she creates a collage. A cat purrs in one corner, wondering why it has not been alone in the apartment for the last few days. Brussels is in a nation-wide lockdown and people must not leave their homes unless with a valid reason. For freelance photographer, Christopher de Béthune, this marks the beginning of Salad Days – as he later titled his series. It is inspired by a Shakespearean idiom meaning a youthful time; accompanied by the inexperience, enthusiasm, idealism, innocence, and indiscretion one associates with youth.

Everything felt fresh: from day one, the self-taught photographer grabbed his beloved Leica M6 to document this state of limbo. “The series depicts the strange feeling of being cast away in our own home, being confined in the vicinity of our sunny apartment. We kept our hands and minds occupied, and against all odds, despite the terrible news we read, heard or saw, despite all the tragic sadness out there, it was quite a simple, good life for us. We were like birds in a nest.” Suddenly he was able to mindfully look, to rediscover the atmospheric lighting in his apartment, to see what his stressed everyday life had rendered invisible. “In fact, I had all the time in the world to observe my personal surroundings,” he enthuses, “and it was fantastic.”

(Text: Denise Klink)

All images on this page © Christopher de Béthune
Equipment: Leica M6 with Summicron-M 35 f/2 Asph

Find the portfolio and the full text in LFI 6/2020.