Lens on Creativity: Tomas van Houtryve

J. Walter Thompson is a proud supporter of the International Center of Photography (ICP), which held its 31st Annual Infinity Awards last month. The Infinity Awards have long celebrated the most distinguished careers and budding luminaries in the field of photography, including artists such as Annie Leibovitz, Bruce Weber, and Susan Sontag, among others over the years.

The Lens on Creativity series features this year’s ICP award winners, sharing their creative inspiration, vision and groundbreaking work.

Spotlight: Tomas van Houtryve (Photojournalism Award)

Belgian documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve is the world’s first artist to use drones as a medium for creative expression. After listening to Pakistani drone strike victims testify before congress, he became both disturbed and fascinated with how technology has the power to forever change someone’s relationship with nature, specifically, the sky. Like many others, van Houtryve believes that clouds, planets, and airplanes are the only matters that belong in the sky. “In Pakistan, if you were born in 2004, you’ve lived your entire childhood with the sky looking back at you, being able to judge you, and being able to decided at a moment’s notice whether you exist or not,” said van Houtryve.

Capturing pedestrian gatherings that have become habitual targets for foreign air strikes cast his work with an unsettling irony. Weddings, funerals, and even a group of people working out, mark situations that have been targeted by such strikes, which van Houtryve believes sets an eerie precedent for the future of warfare. In an essay for National Geographic, van Houtryve questioned, “Are we at a point in the evolution of photography where the medium has become weaponized?”

One of the most haunting photographs in his series Blue Sky Days depicts a birds-eye view of a wedding party and captures the exact moment that the flower girl recognized the drone, throwing her head up to see what the buzzing in the sky was. Van Houtryve wants to convey the horrific possibility of death popping out of the sky at a joyful moment and erase you from the earth. “I don’t want to live in a world where the sky is full of watchtowers looking down on me,” he said.

This project is not van Houtryve’s first photographic study of the military. Van Houtryve’s earlier work also reflects the recurring theme of state power and how the government applies pressure, force, or molds a country. After graduating from an overseas university program in Nepal in 1999, he joined the Associated Press and became the first AP photographer to cover the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba in 2002 when he traveled to Kandahar to photograph the families of the Guantánamo inmates.

Van Houtryve’s images from Blue Sky Days were first published in Harper’s as the largest photo portfolio in the magazine’s 164-year history. His work has also been displayed during solo exhibitions in Paris, New York City, Spain, and Italy. When he is not traveling, van Houtryve is based in Paris.