Manuel Chapa: Gewoon Belgique

As with many other practitioners of street photography, the spark started with a fascination with the mundane acts of going about one’s business. Having had just moved to Belgium before the onset of a global pandemic, I became enthralled in the cultural intricacies of the country and its people. I wanted both to capture and understand the everyday life of an often misunderstood place, often dismissed as cloudy, grey and wet, with a sprinkle of good beer, fries and waffles as redeeming qualities. While the clouds and rain are unavoidable, one can find, with persistence – and a camera in hand – a place with light, colour and warm people. It is in many ways, a place of contrasts and of improbable partnerships. Seven months into this project (and on the 100th year of surrealism), I start to realize why the Belgian surrealists dismissed Breton’s rules of surrealist art – everyday life has enough mysterious things to go around.