Rooms
One year ago, I decided to leave Belgium behind and travel around the world for an indefinite period. Since then, I started an unusual sort of travel diary: I began taking images of every room I say in. Now, I have a collection of rooms from India, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, the US, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico. Over the next years, this series will continue to grow. At the moment, I’m in the Dominican Republic.
I’ve developed the ritual of photographing the room in which I slept with my girlfriend just before checking out. I always look forward to set up my Pentax medium format camera and capture the room. I love to explore these temporary spaces everyone forgets after coming home with photos of beaches, landmarks, selfies, and museums.
Like people, a room has a personality, and they all look different. The problem is that most people never really experience or see that. I try to notice details, light and atmosphere and, most of the time, I don’t even mind if there’s something “wrong” with the room. It just adds personality. The second thing is that booking websites or travel magazines almost never show the room as it is. They strip it down from all the personality and atmosphere. Photoshop, 3D renderings, everything is used to make the photos look slick and boring.