Made in Belgium

Colour photographs of Belgium by Harry Gruyaert, paired with short texts by the Belgian writer Hugo Claus. The pictures treat the country as a place caught between older local traditions and a fast, American-influenced modern life. In the photographer's own note, the banality of everyday scenes sits against surrealism and against customs that survived the post-war years. He describes the project as an attempt to photograph his own country without falling into sentimentality or plain documentary. He began in black and white, found it too melancholic and not realistic enough, and soon moved to colour. The approach is personal, colour-led documentary and street photography rather than reportage. Gruyaert contributes a foreword and Robert Delpire, the publisher, a postface. It is a single-photographer monograph with a literary text, issued in Dutch and French editions, and it is a hardcover with a dust jacket.