a Brussels fantasy
Brussels is manifold, excessive, messy. For a photographer, whose job is essentially make order in a chaotic reality, it is therefore a real challenge. Even more when the photographer comes from a reality that has made measure, order and classical beauty its aesthetic and cultural manifesto, then the challenge is double.
For Brussels, the famous maxim of Heraclitus "Panta rei" is valid; here everything flows, with Belgian slowness, like the river of cars that clog rue Belliard at rush hour. Nothing is really definitive here, so you always come back gladly.
Even on rainy days (and are not a few) Brussels retains its identity, doubles it indeed in the pools that reflect the beautiful "maisons" with art nouveau or eclectic facades, and in the urban parks, green and soaked with rainfall and embellished with statues, such as the Parc, the Botanique and the Petit Sablon.
And if it rains too hard you can always find shelter in a brasserie or in a museum to enjoy a Magritte or a Delvaux, or in a "galerie" with its exaggerated lights or, why not, in the underground tunnels of the subway, a small urban work of art for their part.
It's beautiful to photograph, Brussels; without forgetting beer and chocolate, of course.
