The Hangar art centre, located in the trendy Brussels neighbourhood of Place du Châtelain, is a hub for photography and visual arts. Its brick, former industrial building has been transformed into a spacious, light-filled three-storey loft, becoming a focal point for landmark photographic projects in Belgium and across Europe. The young and approachable team at the Photography Centre makes you feel as if you, and only you, were expected here – all while presenting projects of the highest photographic quality.
In 2016, its director, Delphine Dumont, launched the PhotoBrussels Festival, which is now celebrating its 10th anniversary on a grand scale. From 22 January to 22 February, a month, Brussels will host 52 exhibitions organised by contemporary art galleries, home galleries, art centres, and museums. A total of 120 artists, including 55 Belgian creators, explore the richness and diversity of a visual language deeply rooted in our time, engaging in dialogue with an ever-growing and curious audience.
“This tenth edition of the PhotoBrussels Festival marks an important milestone in the history of a project born from a simple conviction: that photography deserves a central place in Belgium’s contemporary cultural landscape. Since its inception, the festival has sought to support creative practice, highlight emerging talents, and celebrate the richness of an especially dynamic Belgian photographic scene, open to the world.” – Delphine Dumont
You absolutely must make time to visit Hangar, if only for “The House” – the 1950s home recreated by London-born, Paris-based photographer Lee Shulman (1973). This was before the digital era, when family photography — and why we love it — was intimate, not displayed on Instagram for public show, self-promotion, or vanity. Only movie stars escaped this rule, with their photos often ending up in tabloids, followed by high-profile breakups and divorces. Family photography was meant for family memory: for children, grandchildren, grandparents.
Lee Shulman scoured hundreds of flea markets and second-hand shops in search of photos of ordinary people, and with remarkable imagination, he reconstructed the majesty of a Home – complete with kitchen and living room, bedroom, and nursery. You feel as though you are visiting an ordinary 1950s family, in the post-war comfort of a society just beginning to enjoy consumer goods. I say this entirely positively, without irony. What today is called “an immersive experience”: you can sit on the living room sofa and view the photos as if on a television; you can powder your nose while looking in the bedroom dressing table mirror; you can even sit on the garden lawn. What sociologist Victor Vakshtain calls “nostalgia for what never happened.” My grandmothers lived much more modestly, but from the photos of my Belgian mother-in-law, typical European and American families lived like this.
The round table, around which the family gathered in the evenings and on holidays, is modeled to perfection. Photographic projections run continuously across it, showing family images in a never-ending loop. These were times when many women were housewives, setting the table meticulously, and dinner was at exactly 7 p.m. For a moment, I envied that era. In my own family, everyone’s daily and weekly rhythm is different, and there is no time for luxury tablecloths, spoons, or cups. But just for a moment – I love my own life.
Through photographs from flea markets and private archives, Lee Shulman reinterprets and creates a collective visual memory of a generation, turning it into an important cultural heritage within a single project. “The House” was first shown in France in 2019 at Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles, taking centre stage at the festival. The British photographer’s artistic method combines archival research, curatorial thinking, and immersive installations, offering the viewer a living dialogue with collective history and a contemporary understanding of the image.
Lee Shulman is a renowned photographer who has published more than twelve books, including Mid-Century Memories, published by Taschen and named The Times Photography Book of the Year, as well as Deja View, released at the end of 2021 in collaboration with Martin Parr. This publication became the starting point for a series of exhibitions in 2022, including a major project at Magnum.
A key initiative in his career is The Anonymous Project, founded by him in 2017 – a large-scale project dedicated to the preservation and study of colour slide photography from the 1940s to the 1980s. Today, the archive contains hundreds of thousands of images and explores universal themes of everyday life, family, identity, intimacy, and social rituals.