Who is Kessels ?

Willy Kessels (1898 Termonde - 1974 Brussels) is today recognized as one of the most important Belgian photographers of the interwar period, especially in the field of architecture photography.

An eminent representative of a modernism influenced by Constructivism, in keeping with the European avant-garde in general at the time his work can be seen as part of the New Objectivity and New Vision movements. He photographed a considerable number of buildings designed by the leading architects of the modernist and Art Deco movements, including Henry van de Velde, Maxime and Fernand Brunfaut, Adrien Blomme, Marcel Leborgne, Jean-Jules Eggericx, Stanislas Jasinski and many more.

It was largely due to his political affinities with the Flemish far right in the 1930s, and with the Verdinaso in particular, that it was not until the 1990s that his reputation was finally established. It should also be remembered that it was the same Willy Kessels who was the set photographer on the famous documentary with a distinctly leftist message Misère au Borinage (1933), directed by Henri Storck and Joris Ivens.

Also, while he took the portrait photograph of Joris Van Severen, for which he has since been much criticized, he was also the portraitist of Léon Degrelle and Paul Van Zeeland.

Although difficult to understand today, such a journey from the far left to the far right, or vice versa, was not rare at the time and reflects the complexity of a period that today we are too quick to oversimplify.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Kessels was condemned as a collaborator at the time of the Liberation. His career as a photographer was seriously damaged as a result and for several decades any scientific study of his work was also limited.

Today, Kessel's work is in a paradoxical situation. While many of his photographs are very widely published and some have even become iconic, his name remains largely unknown to the general public.

Our main desire in publishing the some 4,000 photographs taken from our archives, which consist of more than 8,000 in all, as well as a selection from the ULB's Architecture Archives and Library, is to make this work accessible to researchers but also to enthusiasts and members of the general public so that it may be better known and studied.

To find out more:

Andries, Pool. Willy Kessels, Fotografie 1930-1960, Antwerp: FoMu, 2010.
Eelbode, Erik (dir.). Amnésie : Responsabilité et Collaboration. Willy Kessels, photographe, Brussels: Société des Expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1997.
Naeyer Christine de. W. Kessels, Charleroi : Charleroi Museum of Photography, 1996.
Nicod, Laure. Willy Kessels, Photographie d’Architecture, (La Cambre Horta Faculty of Architecture, Université Libre de Bruxelles, I. Lund (dir.), 2014-2015).