WILLY VANDERPERRE: PRINTS, FILMS, A RAVE, AND MORE

"My story is not yet finished. I feel I still have things to tell."

He was a 12-year-old headbanger and, a few years later, the "local weirdo" — his own words — of border town Menen in the Far West of Flanders, Belgium: a shy, long-haired new-waver, dressed in perennial black, with an altar to indie legend Anne Clark in his bedroom.

But today, Willy Vanderperre is Belgium’s most successful fashion photographer, a fixture of some of the world's most respected fashion magazines, and responsible for the ad campaigns of powerful labels including Prada and Dior. He usually works in tandem with stylist and consultant Olivier Rizzo. They have been each other's great love since they first met, in 1989, in the corridor of the Antwerp Academy.

This spring, Vanderperre is exhibiting at MoMu, the first time the Antwerp museum has devoted an entire exhibition to a photographer. The opening night of "WILLY VANDERPERRE prints, films, a rave and more" in the Antwerp museum drew designers, models and important fashion people from across the world.

And since then, said MoMu director Kaat Debo, visitor numbers have been spectacular.

"It's not a retrospective," Vanderperre said about the exhibition. "My story is not finished. It may be halfway through, but I'm not finished. I feel I still have things to say."

So, a final and definite career overview this is not. The photographer did go through his archives for the occasion in search of images that, he felt, fit together, and "get into a dialogue with each other." It was, he said, "an intuitive edit".

There are tender portraits on display, framed or taped to the walls, of mostly young people. "Kids are the future, you can only be inspired by them. As an adult, it would be pretentious to say that I understand them. You can only listen, and try to make sense what they're about. I feel very privileged."

"The person in front of my camera is, at that moment, the most important person in my life. The model is number one. All my attention, all my energy, goes there. I always look for emotion. You have to give a lot to get something back. A good picture is a trade-off, give and take."

Some models he has been photographing for years. "They are no longer models, but friends. You see them grow in front of the camera."

Working with young people implies that you have a certain responsibility, but he says that applies in principle to all models. "A photograph should never be voyeuristic, gratuitous, or objectifying. I always keep that in mind."

In addition to his own photographs, the exhibition at MoMu features a number of works by artists who influence him, including famed Antwerp Old Master Lucas Cranach and cult Belgian artist Philippe Vandenberg, whose estate Raf Simons worked with for the ultimate collection of his own brand — as well as Ashley Bickerton, Jordan Wolfson, Mike Kelley.

For fans, there is Willy Vanderperre merch: t-shirts, badges, zines, among other goodies. "A sticker," he said, "can have as much value to me as an expensive print. I also just think it's important to be able to offer fans something accessible." Proceeds go in part to Cavaria, a Belgian non-profit organization that defends LGBTI+ causes.

Vanderperre grew up gay himself in Menen.

"It was," he said, "a tough environment, lots of drugs too. I was shy, but I was not afraid of my homosexuality. And I wasn’t afraid to express myself with my clothes. They were a kind of armor. I was the weirdo of Menen. I was never attacked. I was sometimes called after, but it was the same in Antwerp, later. Actually, a lot of people were afraid of me." He laughed.

"Back then, the border still existed; I grew up fifty meters from France. Ram-raids were commonplace. Every weekend a car would drive into a showcase somewhere, and then five televisions or so would be stolen, with which those robbers would rush back to France."

The local Menen arts academy was were Vanderperre first developed an interest in photography. "I remember setting up a lamp, putting my camera on a tripod, and taking a picture, thinking, I’ve just taken a “real” picture, as opposed to a snapshot. It was a self-portrait, in profile, against a white background. I was wearing a black dress shirt, looking quite serious. If you took a picture of me now, as I'm sitting here, the result would be almost the same. Except that my hair" — he pointed at his chin — "came down to here. I had very long hair. As I said, I was very shy, and so I hid behind my hair. All you could see was my mouth." He laughed again. "There was a lot of hiding, back in the day."

He moved to Antwerp, initially to study fashion at the Academy, but he dropped out after only a year, switching to te photography department. 'The whole process, translating an idea into a finished garment, took too long for me. You had to make a mood board, a design, a pattern, then choose fabrics, and only then could you start working on the garment. A photograph is much more immediate. As a fashion student, I always started with a photo, a mood picture. And in fact, for me that photo was already the expression, it was what I wanted to tell. Making a derivative of that — a garment — interested me less. I felt I had more to say as a photographer.'

Vanderperre got to know Olivier Rizzo at the Academy. "I had already seen him walking around Antwerp, but two days before the first day of school, when I went to pay my tuition, I ran into him in the hallway. I asked him if he knew where I had to be, we started talking, and I knew immediately that he was the man of my life. We've been together ever since."

Decades later, Vanderperre and Rizzo keep collaborating, inspiring and challenging each other. "I'm not someone who is always going to use the same light source, and it's nice when you can work with someone who has the same mindset, someone who also wants to tell a different story each time. Or the same story, but from a different angle. I’m still nervous when I begin a shoot with Olivier, much more so than with other stylists. As if I still want to impress him."

They started publishing their shoots in a couple of small Belgian magazines, soon followed by i-D. "Olivier and I never had a four-year plan. We took pictures and we sent them to our favorite magazines because we felt we had to. And we got pretty far on that initial wave of innocence. I only joined an agency when I was already 33 or 34."

Vanderperre and Rizzo’s longest working relationship has been with Raf Simons. They have been friends and collaborators since the late nineties. "We are family, so intense and deep-rooted is our relationship. At first, we sporadically took pictures for Raf’s label: a poster, an image for the inside of a shirt box, display photos for stores, a catalogue. At some point we started shooting campaigns, first for his label, and then for Jil Sander, for Dior, for Calvin Klein, and now for Prada. That, of course, is magical."

"Those first years, everything was always pretty impulsive. Raf would ask if I was in the mood to take pictures, and if I had the time, and sometimes I said yes, and sometimes no. There was never much talk about what we were going to do. He trusted us, and we followed our intuition. With the big houses, there is always an intermediary, an art director who sets out the guidelines along with the creative director. Then those guidelines are interpreted by photographer and stylist. That has never changed. The big difference compared to before is that brands require much more images, for social media and other projects. So there's a lot more happening on shoot days now."

We asked him how he’d define a Willy Vanderperre photograph. "I hope it would be an image that touches people. Then again, I’m sure that's what every photographer hopes for: that people pause for a minute, and think about that image. I find it difficult to describe my work myself. I still see myself as a kind of chameleon. For me, it's more about the emotion I try to evoke in someone than about the techniques or settings I use. I want to keep challenging myself, to get even more out of it. And to do so, I try to dig deeper every time."

WILLY VANDERPERRE prints, films, a rave and more, until August 4 at MoMu Antwerp, momu.be

Text: Jesse Brouns