Jan Baetens, "Marie-Françoise Plissart: Between Documentary and Fiction"

In the third event of the seminar series Women with cameras (and notebooks, sheets of paper, pens, laptops...), Jan Baetens will talk about Belgian photographer and filmmaker Marie Françoise Plissart, whose work has developed along two fundamental axes: the roman-photo and the photography of architecture and urban landscapes, from a perspective that is both plastic and socio-ethnographic.

Marie Françoise Plissart lives and works in Brussels and is one of the leading figures in Belgian photography. She has made several documentaries, exhibited in Europe, the USA, Japan and South Africa, and published photographic books and numerous roman photos, including Fugues (1983, new edition 2024), Droit de regards (1985, second edition 2010), Prague (1985), Aujourd’hui (1993), all in collaboration with Benoit Peeters, and Mons (2009), in collaboration with Caroline Lamarche. With the project Kinshasa. Tales of the Invisible City, she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2004. Together with Jan Baetens, he published Mon Jardin des plantes poèmes et photographies in 2024.

Jan Baetens is Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of Leuven, where he taught Cultural Studies. He is the author of numerous poetic texts and one of the leading contemporary scholars of comics, photography, photo novels, visual studies, illustration and the relationship between words and images. His most recent essays include The Film Photonovel. A Cultural History of Forgotten Adaptations (2019), Illustrer Proust. Histoire d'un défi (2022), Un monde à collectioner (2024), and The Look of the 1960s. Barbarella and Pulp-Pop Comics (2026, with Hugo Frey). The collection of poems Hiver à Rome/Inverno a Roma (bilingual version) is due to be published in Italy by Aragno.