About me
Born in March 1944 I spent most of my early years in Antwerp, Belgium, but moved to Brussels shortly before graduating from secondary school. After studying chemistry in Ghent, followed by a PhD in Biochemistry, I started working for Nestlé in 1968 and stayed with that company ever since. I also married in 1968 and, uncharacteristically, am still married to the same wife all those years. We have two daughters, Ariane, born in Paris and Edda born in Vevey, Switzerland. Both have gone their own way since long but when you look at my pictures you will discover that we are still a close nit entity.
My career with Nestlé has brought us from France to Switzerland, to Nigeria, back to Switzerland, to Malaysia, to India, to Singapore, to Hong Kong and finally to China, in that order. I never worked in Belgium. With my PhD, I logically started in research, but left that ivory tower in 1973 for a career in production.
Since 2002 I retired from producing the world’s best food products and started a new career in photography, by enrolling in the art academy in Sint Niklaas, Belgium, in September 2003. I graduated from that academy in June 2011. The decision to concentrate on photography was of course based on the fact that the subject has always interested me. Already at the age of 12, I got my first camera and I made my first darkroom trials before graduating from high school. Later in Nestlé Switzerland I had joined the photo club and made extensive use of their dark room. Once work started as an expatriate, time was short but the income was better and I made pictures like the average human being did: colour photographs developed in a one-hour outfit and looked at for about 10 minutes and never again.
In 1996, all my drawers were full of pictures that nobody wanted any more, and I decided to change course: only the best would be retained, enlarged and framed so that I could see them. After some years all the walls of our house in Beijing were covered. I retired from Nestlé shortly afterwards and I donated most of the pictures I had in China. Some I still have, in a box in the attic. My first website saw the light in 2003, shortly before starting art school. Today my perception of what constitutes a good picture has changed substantially, thanks to the valuable teachings received and this resulted in a new website in 2008. The site was recently updated but the basic concept remains. I wish you much pleasure looking at my creations.
Ekkehard