Valentin Bianchi

When Valentin Bianchi picked out his first camera with his mother when he was 11, he insisted on choosing a professional model. But it would be many more years before he seriously turned his attention to photography. Today, Valentin works as a photojournalist and storyteller based in Belgium, covering long-form reportage and news, with a particular interest in minority communities and the forgotten.

Valentin's photography has taken him across the globe, from documenting autism in China to covering everyday life in Gaza. He has also worked closer to home, covering healthcare in his hometown of Liège, a city near the border of both Germany and the Netherlands. Valentin's work has been published in The New York Times, National Geographic, Le Monde and The Washington Post, he has worked for wire agencies such as Associated Press, and he is also a member of Studio Hans Lucas.

Encouraged by his father's side of the family to keep images as a hobby and follow the family tradition, Valentin studied architecture rather than photography. "I worked in different offices in Belgium, but I was still buying magazines such as National Geographic," he says. "One day I woke up and thought, 'I can't go back to the office'. After completing the photographic studies he'd long dreamed about, Valentin then enrolled on workshops and masterclasses with a focus on photojournalism to build his confidence, before starting work as a freelance photographer in 2009.

The hidden stories of people with autism – first in Belgium and later in China – resulted in a project called Stars and Rain, which was nominated for UNICEF Photo of the Year 2012 and was a finalist for the ANI-PixPalace grant at Visa pour l'Image. Valentin travelled to Palestine – not to take conflict photos, but to document the everyday life of Gazans. He also met migrants in France who were staking their lives on a better future abroad, documented the Arab Spring uprisings, and covered the devastating flooding in Italy and Belgium in 2021.

"I learned everything after school," he says. "You learn a lot when you face new things, especially in the field." Having used the Canon EOS 5D series for years, Valentin has now moved to mirrorless, shooting on the Canon EOS R5 and EOS R3.

After covering the ageing crisis in Japan, Covid-19 brought Valentin's storytelling closer to home. "I have the feeling that I had two periods: before the pandemic and after," he says. Primarily working abroad before, often on longer-lead stories and personal topics rather than news, the pandemic forced Valentin to find a way to work in Belgium. His colleagues were photographing the crises in hospitals, but he looked for another angle. "I started to work with funeral homes, and I made long stories with them," he says. "It was interesting to find another point of view."

His location in a quieter corner of Belgium also started to gain attention from foreign editors. Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat assigned him to cover Belgian hospitals, when restrictions in Finland prevented journalists from entering. Later, The New York Times asked him to cover a story about Jewish families of American soldiers in Belgium, Luxembourg and France, leaning on the cross-border nature of his location.

Continuing to mix domestic reporting with international personal projects, Valentin is interested in covering more wars and crises – having long been inspired by photojournalists James Nachtwey and Larry Burrows – as well as exploring Africa, a continent that meant a lot to his father. He has no regrets about turning his full attention to photography. "I'm so much happier in my life now," he says. "Because I do what I want."

What motivates you?

"Telling stories. A story can be around the corner, or quite far from Belgium, but everywhere you go, you meet interesting people. I'm always interested in discovering new things, because you learn a lot from the people you meet. Sometimes you meet incredible people, living in bad conditions, but they give so much to you. People are my motivation, especially when they are living through something quite unknown, or not really known in the media."

What have you learnt from your long-term project covering medical teams in Belgium?

"Belgium is a really small country, but we have medical red zones – areas where access for a doctor takes more than 10 minutes. Helicopters really help medical teams access these zones. Over 10 years, I followed that team. It helped me a lot to know the right distance when you are covering something difficult. Sometimes, we were entering a home where someone was dying on the sofa – you have to learn how far you can go to take a picture."

How is your shooting style reflected in the glass you choose to use?

"I prefer to work with fixed lenses such as the Canon RF 35mm F1.8 MACRO IS STM, because you need to move. When you are trying to document intimate moments, it's really difficult to arrive with big camera gear. I prefer to move and get on my knees, or jump on a wall to find a good angle. As a professional photojournalist, you need zoom lenses in your kit, because when you are on an assignment, you don't know what you will find, and it is often essential to meet all your shooting expectations – but I prefer fixed lenses."

What are some of the key attributes needed for a career in photojournalism?

"You need to trust in the story you are working on. You need to have empathy, because you are making contact with people you don't know, and if you arrive with a bad approach, it won't work. So the best advice is to be humble. And you need to be honest. If you are not honest in the way you are telling the story, or with the idea you have in your mind, and if you lie to people, they will know one day. Sometimes access is the most difficult part of our job. I tell students that if the door is closed, enter through the window."

"If you want to become a photojournalist just to be famous, you are not being honest with people. If you want to do that work to become famous, stop it directly. I appreciate when people say to me, 'I don't know you'. But if they know one picture I took, it's more interesting, because it means that my work is seen. It's the best compliment they can give me."

Instagram: @valentinbianchi

Website: bianchivalentin.com

Visura: visura.co/valentinbianchi