“The biography”,as usual riddled with commonplaces.

Description of a photographer in brief?! How about this:

Bernard Onderdonck, born in Belgium 1977, studied photography at the Institute for Higher Education of the Visual Arts, Saint Lucas, Brussels. As from 2005 he’s been active as a freelance photographer.

Describing him without using platitudes is hard, if not impossible. So here’s for a few commonplace facts, because they are usually true and apply to him as well:
-He photographes humanitarian subjects from a social standpoint.
-He doesn’t picture “the news” as such, but everything relating to it taking place in the margin.
-His object is to show that what isn’t reported by the media.
How’s that for a few commonplaces!

Labelling him as a press-photographer or photo-journalist wouldn’t be correct, nor as a documentary photographer. He’s a socially-oriented reportage photographer who tells his story from a personal point of view, guided by emotions, judgements and/or prejudices. So don’t expect to see the whole truth, most of the time he doesn’t know that himself.
He photographs “his” stories in “his” image-language.

His image-language is captured in a series of images. Comprising the story into one image seems impossible for him. That’s why he wants to attribute space to his story by using the photo-story as a tool. Therefore he’s mostly engaged in long term projects in order to construct his stories in a proper manner.
A recurring theme in his stories is religiën, this being the main subject in many of his stories whereas in others it may be an underlying motivation.

More often than not, pictures speak louder than words.
Therefore, this biography can be considered as a sketch, as an attempt at clearly establishing the position of this photographer in a world made up of pictures.
So, let the picture tell the “real” and “full” story!