Short profile
Dominique Brion grew up in Ghent, but has been living, working, and photographing in Brussels for several years. He focuses on street photography and is also an art director and producer. His clients include: Fila, Red Bull, Bellerose or Universal Music.
In the interview you can find out more about his way of working, whether he likes shadows better than light and what it all has to do with a duck.
5 QUESTIONS TO DOMINIQUE BRION
Can you tell us a little bit about how you became a photographer?
To be honest, it’s still hard for me to call myself a photographer. In my head, so for me personally, it makes sense if you’ve actually studied photography. However, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck… It’s hard not to call it a duck - I guess? I’m an autodidact that always had an interest in the medium. From claiming the old point and shoots on family trips to a student job taking pictures at events when I was 16/17: I loved taking snapshots. It laid down for a while but picked it back up around 2017 when I experimented a bit with analogue cameras. As this is not a cheap hobby, I switched to digital pretty fast. It started getting more serious just around COVID broke out. More time on my hands and endless walks around town made me dive deeper into the possibilities of my camera and the medium itself. After that, I started doing small jobs here and there. Fast forward to a couple of years later and still in love with it.
Photo: Dominique Brion
Please share something about your images. What is your special interest? How do you choose the colors, composition, themes etc.?
I was talking to someone a while ago and they asked the same question. I replied that I love sun/sunlight and thrive on that. He asked what I especially liked about it and I said the hard and dark shades and contrasts. To which he replied: “so, you like shadows, actually?”. It made sense. So these days when the question pops up I sum it up as follows: shades, texture and colours. When I roam the streets I never really have a mission in my head. I just walk and look. Follow the light. It’s a pretty intuitive process. Obviously for actual shoots you can’t do that, and then I’ll try to see more how the person reacts to certain commands. See how comfortable they are in front of a camera and work with what they give me. In this case I will always try to work with complementary contrasts - in a non cheesy way.
Photo: Dominique Brion
Where does this interest come from?
Again, most of my work is very intuitive. It’s from the gut. When I see a scene, or a frame developing by seeing someone in the distance (or right in front of me) that’s going to do something obvious like walking past a heavily reflecting window, ray of light, … I grab my camera and shoot it. I’ve always loved to watch movies and I do feel like a lot of things that play out in front of me remind me of certain scenes, monologues, dialogues, …
Photo: Dominique Brion
How do you get inspired? And what inspires you the most? Films, books, or magazines? Or what surrounds you?
Definitely films. Absolutely. But then in the end, probably everything around me… From a new edition of FOAM Magazine dropping into my mail to that exhibition about ancient Alexandria and back to visiting Fondacion Miro. Tiny details can spark an idea to try later. And traveling… Traveling also helps - a lot.
What are your plans for the rest of the day?
Editing a batch of pictures I took in Paris earlier this week, couple of meetings and doing groceries 🙂.
