Biographie
After a master's degree in French and Roman literature, Pauline Vanden Neste entered the Ecole Supérieure des Arts de l'Image Le 75 (Brussels), from which she graduated in 2021. "Return to La Louvière" has been exhibited as part of the Hainaut Prize for Visual Arts (Mons) and at the Contretype gallery (Brussels). This work won the Roger de Conynck prize (King Baudouin Foundation) in 2021. The book "On est venus ici pour la vue", of which P. Vanden Neste is co-author with Tom Lyon, was part of the Belgium Photobooks selection presented at the Rencontres d'Arles 2022.
Présentation
Eight years ago, I left La Louvière. Still marked in its space by its former steel and earthenware activities, the city seems stuck in a long-gone past. Clumsy urban development has left the city centre's shops in difficulty and the redevelopment projects for the industrial sites in limbo. La Louvière is struggling to find its axis of economic revival and is looking for a future.
This documentary photographic work was constructed during long walks where the desire to take a new look at key places was mixed with wandering and chance encounters. The characters in my photographs are young people who take over the urban space and allow me to enter into a form of intimacy. Between distance and proximity, my images express the feeling of someone who rediscovers a place he once inhabited.
Most of those I knew have left, but the return to the city where I come from is a return to something hidden that continues to bind me to it. A kind of love that is seeking its way.