Hello, I’m Anouk.
I fell in love with photography in my grandfather’s attic in Ostend, sorting through boxes of slides that smelled of dust and the sea.
He shot everything — Sunday lunches, harbour boats, my mother as a girl squinting into the sun. None of it was perfect, and all of it was precious. That’s still the feeling I chase.
After studying photography at KASK in Ghent, I spent several years assisting editorial and wedding photographers in Brussels and Lisbon. In 2017 I opened Bright Grain in a former bookbinder’s workshop in the Patershol, the old medieval quarter of Ghent, with one wide north-facing window and far too many plants.
Today I work mostly digitally, but I still shoot a roll or two of film at nearly every session. The colour, the softness and the grain shape how I edit everything else.
Slow, warm, unposed
Natural light first
I work with daylight whenever I can, and bring only a little gentle lighting when the room asks for it.
Time to settle in
Sessions are never rushed. We talk, walk and wait for the moment when people stop performing for the lens.
Honest editing
A consistent, film-inspired colour grade. Skin stays skin; I remove a stray blemish, never a laugh line.
A few small facts
- Favourite cameraAn old Pentax 67 with a sticky shutter.
- Favourite filmKodak Portra 400, always slightly overexposed.
- LanguagesDutch, English, French and enough Portuguese to order lunch.
- Off dutyLong coastal walks, sourdough experiments and second-hand bookshops.