Transcripts of a Sea – Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, Belgium

20 Sep — 4 Jan 2026

Exhibition
20.09.25 – 04.01.26

With the exhibition Stephan Vanfleteren. Transcripts of a Sea, the internationally renowned photographer shares the enchantment that has driven him to and into the sea over the past five years. Vanfleteren’s never-before-shown photographs invite you to discover centuries of marine art, from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, through a fresh perspective.

The sea & Stephan Vanfleteren
Vanfleteren analyses the sea, in all her various shapes and ever-changing light, with an obsession bordering on the dangerous, and with a fluid longing. Stormy, mirror-like, misty, thunderous, the surface deceptively calm or like a wildly-thumping washing-machine drum: the photographer does not observe it from the beach or from a boat but opts for a wet confrontation by literally immersing himself in the sea.

Marine art from the 17th to the 21st century
In the exhibition, Vanfleteren enters into a dialogue with visual artists who, like him, are obsessed with the sea. What connects him to artists such as Gustave Courbet, Thierry De Cordier, James Ensor, Victor Hugo, Léon Spilliaert, August Strindberg, Marlène Dumas and Rinus Van de Velde is their approach to the theme. Rather than presenting pure observation, they manage, after years, to depict their personal sea. As a photographer, Vanfleteren navigates alongside them, through artworks spanning four centuries of marine art.

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