Editors' Choice

EDITORS’ CHOICE

Bart Kuykens - A flat6 love affairBy Del Gregory

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I’m Del Gregory founder/Editor of b500. Some of you reading this might know me already but for those of you who don’t, I’ve been a photographer of people, places and lifestyle for over 40 years. Along with that I’ve been in publishing all over the world for what feels like a similar time.

As a publisher of books and magazines myself, I know how difficult and often exhausting a process it can be, with this in mind I wanted to write about the photographer

Bart Kuykens and his book series A flat6 love affair.

I invited Bart to have his own regular page in b500 a few months back as I knew he would add a great value to the content of the magazine each issue.

I’ve been happy to promote his series of books through b500 and a couple of weeks back I made the decision to add his entire back catalogue to my own book shelf. The problem however was that my own bookshelves are now so rammed with books, I knew

I would have to design and build a new one.

After some discussions with my wife, (which took all of ten seconds as she’s been asking me to build new book shelves for the 10 years we’ve been in our new house), she asked suspiciously, “why all of a sudden do you want to build the new book shelves”. No reason darling, I replied as I was lifting the 14kilo box containing P.O.R.S.C.H quietly up the stairs whilst her back was turned. (E as volume 7 is due next year)...

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And so I now have my own full set (eagerly awaiting E) and have no further excuses not to build some new book shelves over the forthcoming holidays to house my flat6 love affair series.

It was during a recent conversation with Bart that I decided to bite the bullet of the whole series, because as Bart explained to me, he now only has a few left of various volumes and before very long you simply won’t be able to get a whole complete series - so I felt it was now or never.

Frankly I’m not sure how I’m going to hide these and then suddenly put them on my new bookshelves before I get my head chewed off for investing in ‘more car books’, but I’ll have finally made some new book shelves so what more could my long suffering wife possible want?

Bart is a unique photographer who knows how to get the very best from his Hasselblad and Leica film cameras, and as a fellow photographer of both of these brands myself, I could literally wax lyrical about his skill and style all day long!

I’m not going to dress this up - If you just like classic pictures of cars, then you might not even ‘get’ Bart’s work. But if you like looking at dark, moody, gritty, street style, quick off the mark, fly on the wall style photos, then you’re going to love Bart’s work. Bart’s style isn’t always about sharp focus and whilst you might be wondering isn’t that the point of photography? I’m here to tell you no it isn’t. We have left the comfort zone of conventional photography behind and entered into a whole new arena which lives and breathes a separate life of its own - as pure art.

It’s easy to get pulled into Bart’s world through his camera and I’ve just spent a glorious whole weekend poring through his six current volumes and immersing myself into his dark and mysterious world whilst sipping a fine 30 year old malt with just the noise of a crackling fire next to me. Pure heaven.

His style is honest and completely understanding of his subject, which as a longterm owner himself, he knows so well, but for me it’s the different Porsche owners who he captures within his story board that make the images so personal. It’s like I’ve stumbled into a private film set with every shot in every volume. Some of the people I know, some I don’t - but immediately want to.

Within these beautifully crafted books Bart has clearly decided to let the images speak for themselves and as someone who believes that less is more, I love the fact the books are in no way ‘over designed’. The design is minimalistic but like the images equally exquisite, which makes picking up each volume and turning the pages even more pleasurable.

I guess to sum up, I’d say there are books and then there are books. There are photographers and then there are photographers. With A flat6 love affair you get the very best of both.

If I had to score these books out of 10? 11. Don’t miss getting a whole series whilst Bart still has them. Each one comes signed and numbered.

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