Exploring Jewish identities in Belgium, a personal quest

                            This photographic project is a commentary on the process of integration of Jews in Belgian society. Although this work focuses exclusively on Belgian Jews, there is a universal quality to this process that can be shared with other communities throughout the world. 

While conducting this project, I visited with several families, speaking and listening to them. I was attracted by their faces, their gestures, their present and their past. 

My photographs try to capture a community in which I was raised which is also define by a system of codes and conventions that I try to analyse. In the subjects that I chose to photograph, I looked for signs of Judaism. For some it meant the religion and its observance, for others it was secular through an identification with a collective history and the transmission of certain values and traditions. This work attempts to show the complexity of the process of acculturation.

What is a (to be) Jew, anyway? 
An investigation into the specificities of Jewish culture.
I see my work as an anthropological pursuit.  Through my images, I explore Jewish identity versus local identity. I investigate Jews living a multicultural society. Some photographs show a mixture of confidence on one hand and vulnerability on the other.

In our world and culture where we strive for permanence, no matter how much we want it, existence is always caught in a flux of impermanence. All temporal things,  whether material or mental, are in a continuous change of condition,  subjected to decline, destruction or transformation. 

 My images convey stories, emotions and energy. While the individual stories that I photograph are fixed in images, the viewer’s personal history and consciousness contribute to the richness of the aesthetic experience. 

The aesthetic experience is for ever changing and animated by a range of emotions.  The spectator's perception and interpretation changes every time they look at a photograph. This is what I consider to be the place of impermanence in the aesthetic experience. 

 In addition each photograph raises the question of time passing, how the person has changed since the photograph was taken. Although the photograph is a permanent record of a particular moment, it also implies change, time and the fragility of life.

Once the viewer has understood the place of impermanence in the aesthetic experience, he can open himself/herself to a new reading of his/ her experience. 

In recent contemporary Jewish history, the idea of permanence versus impermanence is very much alive.  After the Shoah, the state of Israel was created to give a permanent land for Jews. However the ongoing social and political transformations of the country have  contributed to a state of impermanence.