I ENTER YOUR WORLD AS A STRANGER.
I LEAVE WITH A STORY WORTH TELLING.
Documentary photography for businesses, brands, organisations and the people behind them.
Berlin-based. Available internationally.
Every commission begins with an encounter. Different places, different people, different reasons for inviting me in. What connects them is curiosity and the desire to look beyond the obvious. Here are a few worlds I’ve had the privilege of documenting.
Worlds I’ve entered.
Group Joos
Belgium · Printing & productionA look inside a world where machines, materials and people bring printed matter to life.
Brussels Airport
Belgium · Aviation & infrastructureAn encounter with the spaces, rhythms and human activity of an international airport.
Black Gold Amsterdam
Netherlands · Hospitality & cultureCoffee, vinyl and the small rituals that give an independent place its identity.
Glidewell Foundries
United States · Industry & manufacturingHeat, material, labour and the human presence inside industrial production.
YOUR WORLD COULD BE NEXT.
Humans
✳︎
Curiosity
✳︎
Friction
✳︎
Wonder
✳︎
Rituals
✳︎
Humans ✳︎ Curiosity ✳︎ Friction ✳︎ Wonder ✳︎ Rituals ✳︎
What we can create together
Every organisation is its own strange little universe. People doing things. Machines making noises. Rituals nobody questions anymore. Beautiful accidents. Things that work. Things that probably shouldn’t, but somehow do.
I like entering these worlds. Sometimes you have a brief. Sometimes you have an idea scribbled on a piece of paper. Sometimes you just know there’s something worth showing, but you haven’t figured out what it is yet.
That’s where we begin.
HUMANS IN THEIR NATURAL HABITAT
Founders, workers, thinkers, makers, troublemakers. The people who keep the whole thing moving. Portraits that leave some room for being human.
BEHIND THE DOORS
Factories, offices, workshops, airports, kitchens. The places where things actually happen. Including the corners nobody thought were interesting enough to photograph.
PICTURES WITH SOMETHING TO SAY
Campaigns, publications, websites, annual reports. Yes, photographs can communicate a message. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if they made someone feel something too?
THE UNEXPECTED DEPARTMENT
Documentary assignments. Time, access, curiosity and a camera. We follow what’s happening and occasionally discover something nobody put in the brief.
And if your idea doesn’t fit any of these categories?
Even better.
The human inside the SpaceSuit
HELLO. I’M ZOTEYE.
Photographer. Observer. Occasional troublemaker. Berlin-based. Roots from Belgium.
The person behind the camera, and the universe beyond the commissions.
I've always been fascinated by what happens when you look a little longer. When the ordinary becomes extraordinary, strangers become familiar, and places begin to reveal the stories they've been quietly keeping to themselves.
I’ve photographed people, places, businesses, machines, strangers and things (no Stranger Things yet) that probably didn’t need photographing. Some of it was commissioned. Some of it happened because it is just part of who I am.
I believe the best photographs happen somewhere between paying attention and letting go. I like real people, imperfect situations, unexpected encounters and the things that don’t always fit neatly into a brief.
Photography is how I enter worlds. But it’s also how I try to understand my own. And there’s quite a bit more happening around here.
Street photographs. Portraits. Editions. Experiments. Ideas that might go somewhere. Others that probably won’t. All part of the same ongoing adventure.
You’ve entered through the business door. Feel free to wander through the rest of the house.
Or, if you have a world you’d like me to enter:
See you somewhere along the way.
ZOTEYE ×