Thomas Vanden Driessche was born in Leuven in 1979. After working for several years for the International Committee of the Red Cross, he is currently a freelance photographer and co-creator of Studio Fiftyfifty. His personal work is distributed since October 2014 by INSTITUTE For Artist Management Agency and he collaborate on a regular basis for magazines and newspapers from the international press (Le Monde, Monocle, Libération, Le Nouvel Observateur, The New York Times, The Guardian, etc.)
Deeply rooted in the documentary tradition, his photography is often frontal and try to dissect reality, with particular attention paid to the portrait. His most recent projects deal with contemporary India and its rapid industrialization. Thomas started also a long term work on the post-industrial territory of Charleroi and the complex mutations of identities of this Belgian city.
His work has, among others, been exhibited in the Center Pompidou, the festival Images Singulières in Sète, the Boutographies in Montpellier, the Festival Circulation(s) in Paris, at the International Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts of Liège, the FORMAT Festival Derby, the Hamburg Photo Triennale, the Festival Images de Vevey.
In 2013 Thomas was nominated two times for the prestigious Pictet Prize. His first book "How to be a photographer in four lessons""was published by André Frère Edtions in 2013 and launched at the Grand Palais for Paris Photo. In this book, he pretends to teach photography in a very personal way with a gentle irony emphasizing stereotypes and excesses in certain trends in contemporary photography.
Some pieces of his work are part of the collection of the Centre Pompidou and the BNF (Bibliothèque Nationale de France).
Thomas Vanden Driessche was also a member of the Jury of the Humanitarian Visa d'Or 2011 and the Boutographies Festival in 2014.
Thomas lives and work in Brussels.