Belgian Station Secrets

For every visible bit of Belgium, there is some invisible counterpart. Hidden by Belgian modesty, silence, or surrealism. Despite the constant movement of trains coming and going, there are these places all around the stations that seem to be stuck in time. Old spaces, remnants of glory gone by. Heritage and history. This exposition is about Brussels. About the city with three stations, a daily bottleneck for all Belgian Train traffic. Bars with beer taps that would fit a Tintin comic book or a retro movie. Subterranean rooms that forever stayed in the realm of what could have been. Wooden ticket booths that wouldn’t recognise a euro coin or bank note. Rooms where a station master could live a near-aristocratic life. Enormous halls full of empty, abandoned spaces. Royal lodges. Photographer Joost Fonteyn went on a journey as train station explorer to record this secret world full of wonder on film. In this series of pictures, the long-forgotten, dust-covered subjects of these photos seem slightly surprised to be visited. As if to say ‘Wow, we still do exist.’