In this book, Harry Gruyaert invites us to discover his homeland, Belgium, a country he has travelled through for more than sixty years. Flemish by birth, he has long known it as “a visually interesting place where incongruous things happen”. His subtle intuition for colour, combined with his ability to capture the essence of places, is evident in this extensive body of images, at once “historical and Epicurean”, as writer Brice Matthieussent puts it. The grotesque, sarcasm and banality, alongside emotion and a certain tenderness, emerge in images of carnivals, religious processions, café-concerts and small towns bristling with brick houses.
 
 
 
Four portfolios of black-and-white images, a less familiar part of his work, punctuate this visual journey through the flat country, printed on a different paper.