Worked as an interior designer and then trained at the Photography Academy in Sint Niklaas and in Anderlecht. Took a masterclass with British photographer John Davies.

Various exhibitions in Belgium: Musée de la photographie, Charleroi; Fusée de la Motographie de Bruxelles; ‘Land of Photography’ in Ghent, etc.

­- 2016: Winner of the Magnum Photography Award for Belgopolis and then for Building an imaginary city in 2017.

­- 2018: The series Stuffy shell is selected for the Sony World Photography Awards.

An architect by training, Paul D’Haese draws on Belgium’s architectural absurdity in his pursuit of his project Belgopolis: building an imaginary city.

Paul D’Haese’s photos seem to have stepped straight out of a hyper-realist dream from which you won’t wake up. Paul D’Haese explores the limits of the frame, casting a critical eye and making us feel like a character in a surrealist painting. He seems to lose himself in dead-end alleys and to come up against blind walls. The end result is a fictitious city called Belgopolis. This working title is a reference to a defined territory, Belgium, which over time, is likely to extend to other countries. Every photograph in the series is taken in one of the 133 towns in Belgium, without any airbrushing. He is already up to 45 towns, and his project is still continuing! With its close links to the world of dreams, Belgopolis chimes perfectly with the theme of the festival, describing as it does the building of an imaginary city, where the raw images form a dream-like whole.

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