Johan Van Cutsem Email & Phone Number

It all started with discovering the magic of developing prints in my improvised darkroom at the age of 14. Music was my first love so photographing concerts as a teenager was the next step. Nico, John Cale, New Order,Kevin Ayers,Level 42 they all played in Lido Leuven. I sold my pictures at school and soon after ,17 years young, I bluffed my way to a frontstage pass for Rock Torhout/Werchter: Lou Reed, Warren Zevon, U2… captured on Tri-x. This ideal mix of photography and music continued for years. During my bachelor French, German and History I started working as a photographer for studentmagazines and immediately after the final exams I started working for two national newspapers, working from Brussels all over the country. Meanwhile I attended photography courses at the Ecole de ville de Bruxelles, finalizing my professional photo training at SLAC academy in Leuven. As an independent pressphotographer I worked for almost all Belgian newspapers ,newsmagazines and contributed to agencies as Belga and Reuters. Assignments brought me all over Europe and in 1996 I started to travel the world, working for an international travel trade magazine. Besides shooting coverportraits of captains of the travel trade industry, I started collecting landscapes. Travel photography gradually became away a means to an end : expressing emotions aroused by being part of landscapes open and wide. Mountains, deserts, water and ice became my inspiration. By leaving out everything but the bare essentials I dug deep into the heart of my favourite landscapes : photography became art and I started my own gallery to show and sell my work. Languages are important when travelling so I followed breakthrough courses in spanish, arabic and finnish at CLT. Meanwhile I started teaching photography and developed and guided my own phototours, the latter in close cooperation with Hoboreizen, a trusted touroperator with 30 years experience. In 2014 the gallery,situated on the groundfloor of a building with heritage value,in the historic heart of Leuven was completely renovated.