NEWS! Allfather has been published on the Washington Post!

Allfather the Photobook

Sébastien Van Malleghem, a Belgian photographer born in 1986, is undeniably attracted by a natural and organic environment. After his epic photobook "Nordic Noir" (2017), the author of "Police" (2012), "Prisons" (2015), and "Mexican Morgues" (2019), continues his exploration of a rough universe with extreme conditions in this new opus "Allfather" (2021).

An imaginary journey in solitude revealing the tenuous link between a powerful nature and a photographer, sent back to his condition of human being.

Rain curtain, Norway. © Sébastien Van Malleghem - Allfather the book

The idea for the project was born during an artist residency in the Vesterålen region of Norway in 2019. Having been linked to the Scandinavian wilderness for years, Sébastien Van Malleghem returned to Norway the following year, isolating himself in a cabin in the Arctic, then going to the island of Skjervøy and living experiences that exceeded his expectations, made up of adventures and escapades in the mountains, in osmosis with nature: heating with wood, swimming in a nearly icy fjord with whales and orcas during the darkest months of the year. And he feels an irrepressible need to tell a story, perhaps even a piece of his own.

© Sébastien Van Malleghem

A return to his roots, which turns into an indispensable dive into his recent archives. He has gathered a corpus of images taken during invitations or photo commissions in different parts of the world, during the few days he allows himself on the spot for each trip for unlimited and unrestricted wanderings.

© Sébastien Van Malleghem

If the first ones were taken in the United States in the Everglades, south of Florida, in 2016, others come from Norway, Iceland, Brittany and even more simply from his garden, in Belgium. From the flight of a raven to views of an ocean as black as night, via an underwater immersion surrounded by alligators, Van Malleghem transcribes an epic faithful to his fascination: watching scenes in which the banal is transformed into the sublime without geographical or temporal boundaries.

His invisible desire to immortalise nature, like an all-consuming necessity, offers the possibility of discovering a territory that wishes to remain anonymous. Devoid of human beings, or at least barely perceptible, the immense theatre of nature is the main character of this spiritual narrative. His photographs do not observe, they tell and make you dream.

To imagine a journey so often fantasized that the majestic - sometimes aggressive - landscapes silence the most realistic thoughts. His silent, contemplative and fragile freeze-frames are radical touches of pure white and sooty black. And by mixing them, Sébastien Van Malleghem harmoniously matches all these shades of grey that make up the thickness of the world. The images follow one another, to the rhythm of the golden-tinted pages, which echo - or rather remember - the rare light present in the darkness of northern Norway, that of a golden thread through the mountains.

Léonor Matet

April 2021

Allfather le nouveau livre de Sébastien Van Malleghem

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