My guest today is Belgian documentary photographer and photojournalist Gaël Turine. Raised in a family of documentary filmmakers, he found his calling early: a childhood year spent on a small island in the Indian Ocean planted a lifelong need to travel, observe, and tell stories through images. Decades later, that same instinct led him to turn his camera on his own country, walking the flooded river valleys of Wallonia for two years to document the long, slow aftermath of a climate disaster most of the world had already stopped watching.
We talk about why he chose black and white panoramic landscapes over the human portraits he's known for, what it means to fund and shape a personal project from scratch, the ephemeral but intense encounters he has with the people he photographs, and why he still doesn't fully trust short-form video and algorithms as a home for serious documentary work. We also get into his television work for Arte, his dream project on cooperatives around the world, and the farmhouse in the Ardennes he escapes to when the work gets too heavy.
This episode is proudly supported by Cameranu, my partner for camera gear in Belgium and the Netherlands. It's where I send the photographers I work with when they're looking for honest advice and equipment that can actually keep up with serious work. As a listener of this show, you get 10% off with code [CODE].
In this episode you'll learn:
Why Gaël chose black-and-white panoramic landscapes instead of portraits to document the Wallonia floods
How he secured government funding for a two-year personal project, and what he offered in return
What "activism through documentary" looks like when the story is about your own country
Why he still doesn't trust algorithms and short-form video as a home for serious photojournalism
How his farmhouse in the Ardennes shapes both his creative process and his ability to disconnect
About the guest:
Gaël Turine is a Belgian documentary photographer and photojournalist based in Brussels. Raised by two documentary-making parents, he has spent 25 years covering stories for international magazines, teaches documentary journalism at the Université libre de Bruxelles, and produces documentaries for Arte. His long-term project on the Wallonia floods, Mémoire des Rivières, was exhibited at the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi.
