Gert Jochems

Gert Jochems lives and works in Ostend and Antwerp.

Shortly after his studies in sociology and international political relations and a 6 months travel to Bolivia to study the economy and culture around the coca-plant, Gert Jochems devoted himself to photography. He started then quickly working as a photographer for the media, initially for the regional newspaper Het Volk, edition Westhoek (1997), and a year later for the national newspaper De Morgen (1998/2003) and De Standaard. He still photographs on daily base for the latter newspaper today. As well as for the financial newspaper De Tijd.

Since 2008, he has been affiliated with the French agency Agence Vu. In the meantime, he published in various international media, such as Le Monde, De Volkskrant, Nrc Handelsblad, Het Algemeen Dagblad, etc.

Commissioned by De Standaard and other media, he has been following the migration flows to Europe from 2015 onwards, while also keeping an eye on the political consequences that these have had in the host countries of Western Europe. It resulted in te project New Demographics which is until today not edited and published in a book yet. When the war in Ukraine broke out on February 24 2022, he was already in commision on February 27 in the country he still regularly travels to today.

In 2006 and 2007 he worked a lot in the French-speaking part of Belgium, in and around Charleroi, a city that was then considered one of the poorest in Europe, and still is today. In Flanders, Gert Jochems has captured all kinds of bizarre sexual scenes, which resulted in the book S and in the solo exhibition of the same name in FOMU, the photomuseum in Antwerp (2012). Images by Gert Jochems are in the permanent collection of the Photo Museum of Antwerp (FOMU) as well as in various private collections.

(Source: gertjochems.eu)