Harry Gruyaert

Harry Gruyaert has been a member of the Magnum agency since 1982.

Born in Antwerp in 1941, he studied at the Brussels School of Film and Photography from 1959 to 1962. He worked as a freelance director of photography for Flemish television from 1963 to 1967 and then decided to try his luck in Paris. In 1969, he made the first of his many trips to Morocco. From 1970 to 1972, he lived in London, which gave him the opportunity to experiment: he decided to “cover” the 1972 Munich Olympics and the first Apollo flights on a broken television screen he had at his disposal, by manipulating the colors. Between 1973 and 1980, he undertook a long-term photo essay on Belgium, first in black and white, then in color. 

He continues to travel, notably in Asia, the United States, the Middle East, and Russia. For more than thirty years, from Belgium to Morocco and from India to Egypt, this nomadic photographer has been capturing the subtle chromatic vibrations of Eastern and Western light. Far from indulging in stereotypical exoticism, the photographer immerses the viewer in unique and somewhat enigmatic atmospheres. In the 2000s, Harry Gruyaert switched from film to digital photography. Deeply concerned with the quality of his earlier Cibachrome prints, he experimented with inkjet printing from an early stage. This technique revealed the richness of the color ranges present in his film photographs and opened up new possibilities for his work.

Text excerpted from the Visions website