Have you ever found yourself gazing at a passerby and wondered about who they might be, or where they might be heading? In the middle of the bustling streets of the city, there exists a captivating and intriguing world. Prepare to enter Nele van Canneyt’s enchanting lens that captures fleeting moments frozen in time. Through her lens, the inaccessible becomes accessible, and the stories of streets, people, and cities come alive before us. The essence of her work lies in how she visualises her thoughts, especially present as she moves throughout cities. While her photos mirror her inner world, she leaves it up to the viewer to push their imagination and find meaning in the intimate moments she presents.
Much of Van Canneyt’s work comes from an archive of photos taken from her many travels, which she mixes and combines into various exhibitions. After completing her degrees in Journalism and Communication, followed by a Photography Degree at LUCA school of Arts Ghent, Van Canneyt gained wide recognition and praise in her home country Belgium. She had her exhibition debut in 2005 in Ghent, and remains to be displayed in the Netherlands. Her portfolio includes a multitude of solo exhibitions such as “Worlds Inside, Outside” (2010) and “Common Ground” (2020). Van Canneyt’s recent exhibition “Binnenland” (2021) at Musea Brugge which displayed photos taken in the streets of Brugge in the middle of the covid solitude and emptiness, was praised by Belgian art critics and newspapers for the alternative world she proposes that only exists within her lens
In past exhibitions, and in her book “As if the day never existed” (2021), she displays shots of urban spaces from different cities and continents, including the US, South America, and Belgium, which as an entity blurs the lines of difference and create a sense of harmony. Van Canneyt reminds us of the universal human relation to our environments by finding homogeneity between different urban landscapes. Through the visual recognition of the enduring aspects of urban life and how humans relate to space, we face a shared experience across cultures and borders. With her international exhibitions held in the Spain, the US, Germany, and her recent group exhibition in Canada “Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie” (2021), she forecasts an eagerly anticipated debut in the Netherlands.
