Architecture & Design 2nd Place

Livestock shelters in fields are so common in the Belgian landscape that nobody pays them much attention, but the countryside offers a range of architectural gems in many shapes, materials and colours.

For five years I criss-crossed Belgium to find just the right kind of shed, carefully listing them so I was prepared to photograph them in ‘perfect’ lighting conditions, by which I mean dense fog. The fog was necessary to isolate and valorise the construction – without it, the shed is just an extra in the landscape. As fog is unpredictable, I never knew how long it would last, and the project took several years to complete.

In a way, a photograph of a weather-beaten shed is an allegory for our lives: we all muddle on, we try our best, we carry the scars and we all die horizontally in the end. Humans harbour a deep longing for shelter, warmth and security and that is perhaps what makes these wondrous little structures so human.

Servaas graduated at KASK in Ghent but it took a few years after he graduated before he began to photograph more intensively.
Gradually his work took on a recognizable character. Van Belle has a great interest in architecture and constructions that at first sight seem banal such as utility buildings, billboards, hunting towers.
Transience and the influence of time are key concepts here.
His work has been published in Belgium and The Netherlands. De Standaard, De Tijd, de Volkskrant, NRC.