Patrick Van der Elst

Patrick Van der Elst was born in Brussels on May 18, 1969; he lives and works in Brussels. He is a self-taught photographer and his career started very naturally, driven by the passion for taking pictures.

The people he met, the books he read, his life and his medical career are his sources of inspiration today.

His photographs show ?surgical? beauties that suggest tenderness, have a poetic side and an almost touchable sensuality.

Patrick Van der Elst doesn?t wish to focus on himself or his personal history. He uses objects, mannequins, toys, figurines, plastic babies for telling us stories, with his own words, emphasizing the things he wants us to see with a great eye for detail that cannot leave us indifferent.

Unlike snapshot photography, his approach is based on an intense reflection and almost ?clinical? productions that question our times. Relying on the morbid innocence of plastic dolls, on images of modest naked little girls and of children with melancholic looks, he deals with subjects such as sex, the consumer society, religion and the finance world.