ABOUT FILIP NAUDTS

Filip Naudts (1968) began his career working for Belgian national television and press in 1992. The following year, he was employed by the Antwerp Fotomuseum, where he remained until 2002. In 1993, he founded his own photo studio, Guarda La Fotografia, where he quickly developed his own poetic style, often referring to the portrait paintings of the Flemish Primitives. From 2002 to 2006, he was photo editor of the Dutch professional photography magazine Foto. In 2006, he started his career as a full-time freelance photographer.

A landmark moment in his photographic career was a solo exhibition of his work at the National Technical Museum in Prague (2000). His work has been published in magazines both nationally and internationally. Filip Naudts is considered one of the most compelling and thought-provoking photographic artists of his country and generation. He is fascinated by portraying beauty while simultaneously adding a small humorous, often surreal element to the image, revealing the relativity of beauty.

In 2014 and 2017, in the city centre of Ghent, Naudts founded Studio Guarda La Fotografia and Paparazzo, two photography-inspired tourist guesthouses in which some of his photographs are exhibited. In 2025, he founded the tourist accommodation Zjuul Zeke in the Flemish Ardennes, continuing this concept.

In 2018, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Guarda La Fotografia, Stadsmuseum Lokeren presented a retrospective exhibition of Naudts’ photographic work. Among the visitors was Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.

Since 2019, Filip Naudts has occasionally been invited to make cameo appearances, portraying himself as a photographer in fictional TV series such as Familie (episode 6335), Undercover (episode 14, “Trojan Horse Power”), Grond (episode 7, “Diwan Awards”), and Chantal 2 (episode 4, “Vreemde Vogel”). In films, he has appeared as a photographer, including in Net als in de film (NL), La Graine (FR), and De Idylle (NL).

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BOOKS:

• Auromatic: Emotional Portraits of Female Alter Ego's. Brugge: Foto Art, 2000. ISBN 90-76001-25-1.

• Guarda La Fotografia. Oostkamp: Stichting Kunstboek, 2013. ISBN 978-90-5856-449-8

• Paparazzo. Oostkamp: Stichting Kunstboek, 2015. ISBN 978-90-5856-535-8

• The Picture of Dorya Glenn. Oostkamp: Stichting Kunstboek, 2017. With Julie O'yang. ISBN 978-9058565778. English and Dutch edition