Karl Houtteman is from Bruges in Belgium, born in 1979. When he was a child, his parents used to bring him to art museums. Every time he visited one of them he felt moved by the history, the arts and the artists themselves. In fact, his dad has a background in painting and still paints to this day, so we can pretty much say he has been into art from childhood.
Karl's very first inspiration, therefore, comes from street photography artists Alexey Titarenko and Henri Cartier Bresson. Later on, painters had also influence in shaping his art such as Marc Rothko, Francis Bacon, Picasso, Modigliani,...
Karl approached photography as a way to express feelings and energies through beautiful images. That’s what he found in street-photography. While experimenting with ND filters and blur, he discovered a new way to take photographs and to see the world as the images obtained were so abstract and unreal.
Now, through the use of multiples exposures and by making intentional movements with his camera, he expanded his creativity to get closer to painters who inspired him with their ability to display the invisible. Karl is not interested in composing the perfect image, instead he wants to capture an emotion, display energy and convey a feeling through his creations.
Photography is not a one shot story here, he captures different dimensions into one frame. What you see is a surreal image taken from the real.
The effects that Karl use are created entirely IN-camera. No photoshop post-processing techniques are used to achieve effects.