Claude Simon

Country: Belgium

During the seventies I was already passionate about photography and had obtained AFIAP in 1977. After a forced stop in 1981, I was finally able to start again in 2012, and the EFIAP came in 2013, then, year after year , bronze, silver, gold, etc… and I just got EFIAP/d3.
Photography has always been for me a way of expressing life as we feel it, good or bad, what we have experienced, happiness and misfortune.
I love Africa very much, I have lived many expeditions, alone, in Ethiopia, I discovered a fiery world there, met people with whom it was easy to feel an interest in their universe and was able to rejoice. . Then, several times in Namibia, a group of 8 Belgian amateur photographers. This is where I tasted the endless desert, nature photography which is always wild nature, and also a great freedom. The meeting of unknown peoples whose presence we feel intensely, while completely ignoring the language, the Bushmen of the Kalahari, the Himba of Kaokoland, the attractive landscapes, the amazing fauna, and the immensity of deserts like the Namib. I have never asked a person to turn a little to get a better light, or to strike a pose. I do not want to disturb or change a universe that is not mine.
I am also attracted by montages and even abstract constructions, creative photos that encourage us to ask ourselves many questions whose answer is ultimately within us, further than reality. The camera is simply a tool, but every photo is an adventure.
And I like to play with light, colors, shadows, and feelings.
A photo is not meant to stay in a drawer or a hard drive, it would be a dead photo. The photo clubs and their exhibitions, the International Fairs are a way of offering them to those who love this means of expression and the social networks make it possible to make them known further, to a greater number, and to bathe in the excellence of the photos of others.
The Competitions are a school of humility, modesty, and allow us to improve ourselves by being demanding for ourselves in the smallest details, in a creative atmosphere favorable to the development of sensitivity.
I thank the organizers and the juries who devote so much of their lives to it.