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AGAINST THE TIDE – INTRO TEXT

‘AGAINST THE TIDE’ is Wouter Vanhees’ tribute to Mumbai, his adopted hometown from 2022 to 2024.

The book takes the viewer on a personal visual journey throughout the city, interwoven with a peek inside the lives of Wouter’s friends Sidharth, Apurv, Ashish, Utkarsh and Varun. The music they create together with their post-hardcore band Pacifist forms the soundtrack and inspiration to his work, while these five Mumbaikars personally became part of it by opening their homes and lives to Wouter and his camera. Pacifist’s music may be non-traditional for India, but in Wouter’s view it is the perfect exponent of what Mumbai is in this day and age: an often chaotic kaleidoscope of contrasting cultures and the most diverse histories and traditions, where dream and reality collides.

The result is a layered, intimate and contemporary portrait of this incredible ‘City of Dreams’.

Everybody needs a compass to navigate this chaos, where everything and its opposite is true. A counterweight to balance the act. A pacifying song to outsing the siren's call, to cautiously guide one, against the tide.

WOUTER VANHEES – BIO

Wouter Vanhees (1978) is a Belgian photographer based in Asia since 2015. Sense of place, memory and liminality are some of the ideas he explores in his artistic work. With his publications, he aims to create modest, tangible representations of his time spent in a certain place.

Wouter's work has been featured and exhibited at IMAGINAIR Art/space (Belgium), Jakarta International Photo Festival (Indonesia), Belfast Photo Festival (UK), OpenWalls Arles (France), Matca Space for Photography (Vietnam), Angkor Photo Festival and Workshops (Cambodia), The Washington Post, Corriere dela Serra, VICE Asia, L'Oeil de la Photographie, etc.

In 2020 Wouter presented his debut photobook ‘HÀ NỘI - WEDNESDAY, 10:43 P.M.’, published by Matca (Vietnam) in cooperation with Lao Dong Publishing House (Vietnam). The book was selected as one of the winners in the ‘Photobook’ category at the Belfast Photo Festival in 2021, and received excellent reviews from American Suburb X and The PhotoBook Journal.

In 2025 he released ‘AGAINST THE TIDE’, published by Bruno Devos at HOPPER&FUCHS (Belgium).

Beschrijving

AGAINST THE TIDE – INTRO TEXT

‘AGAINST THE TIDE’ is Wouter Vanhees’ tribute to Mumbai, his adopted hometown from 2022 to 2024.

The book takes the viewer on a personal visual journey throughout the city, interwoven with a peek inside the lives of Wouter’s friends Sidharth, Apurv, Ashish, Utkarsh and Varun. The music they create together with their post-hardcore band Pacifist forms the soundtrack and inspiration to his work, while these five Mumbaikars personally became part of it by opening their homes and lives to Wouter and his camera. Pacifist’s music may be non-traditional for India, but in Wouter’s view it is the perfect exponent of what Mumbai is in this day and age: an often chaotic kaleidoscope of contrasting cultures and the most diverse histories and traditions, where dream and reality collides.

The result is a layered, intimate and contemporary portrait of this incredible ‘City of Dreams’.

Everybody needs a compass to navigate this chaos, where everything and its opposite is true. A counterweight to balance the act. A pacifying song to outsing the siren's call, to cautiously guide one, against the tide.

WOUTER VANHEES – BIO

Wouter Vanhees (1978) is a Belgian photographer based in Asia since 2015. Sense of place, memory and liminality are some of the ideas he explores in his artistic work. With his publications, he aims to create modest, tangible representations of his time spent in a certain place.

Wouter's work has been featured and exhibited at IMAGINAIR Art/space (Belgium), Jakarta International Photo Festival (Indonesia), Belfast Photo Festival (UK), OpenWalls Arles (France), Matca Space for Photography (Vietnam), Angkor Photo Festival and Workshops (Cambodia), The Washington Post, Corriere dela Serra, VICE Asia, L'Oeil de la Photographie, etc.

In 2020 Wouter presented his debut photobook ‘HÀ NỘI - WEDNESDAY, 10:43 P.M.’, published by Matca (Vietnam) in cooperation with Lao Dong Publishing House (Vietnam). The book was selected as one of the winners in the ‘Photobook’ category at the Belfast Photo Festival in 2021, and received excellent reviews from American Suburb X and The PhotoBook Journal.

In 2025 he released ‘AGAINST THE TIDE’, published by Bruno Devos at HOPPER&FUCHS (Belgium).

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