Eva Vermandel

Late April, early May 2026: 1. Bearded Man on the Windrush Line, SE London 2. Headlight of a Car Squirting Light onto a Brick Wall, Sydenham 3. Orange Peel, Bottle Top, Glass and Water Spilled onto a Table, Tate Britain 4. Chair, Table, Bottle, Orange Peel and Glass, Tate Britain 5. Two Chairs, Tate Britain 6. Empty Jar of Beetroot Slices in a Sink, Sydenham 7. Woman on a Train to Deal 8. Grapefruit, Sydenham 9. Man Playing a Rubik’s Cube on the Bus, Waterloo 10. Man Wearing a Mona Lisa T-Shirt, SE London 11. Mirror in a Front Garden, Deptford 12. Crow on a Digger, Crystal Palace Park 13. Deal Pier Thanks you @heloisewerner and @cellinalexander for the beautiful time in Deal. (Post-post technical note: I’m thoroughly annoyed with the banding in the gradient in picture 1 of the bearded man but that seems to have appeared as a result from compression at IG’s end. If anyone has any advice/tips on how to avoid this please let me know.)

I now have a daylight studio at home and the first commission I did there was a set of portraits of the Aitken Alexander literary agency team. The studio worked a treat and all were brilliant people to photograph. Left to right: Clare Alexander, Lesley Thorne, Emma Paterson, Fran Morgan, Lisa Baker, Monica McSwan, Tilda Southern-Wilkins, Anna Hall, Chris Wellbelove, Ariana Crolla, Talia Schwarz and Harriet Moore. These portraits are for the new Aitken Alexander website, beautifully designed by @lucymaydesignstudio which launches in June. @aitkenalexander

April 2026. 1. Blue Glove and Leaf, Sydenham 2. Chichester Cathedral (1) 3. Chichester Cathedral (2) 4. Birds, Late Afternoon, Crystal Palace Park 5. Car Parked in Front of Shrubs, Sydenham 6. Plastic Cup, Sydenham 7. Red Tunnel, Rotherhite 8. Car Roof, Late Afternoon, Sydenham 9. Pigeon Wing, Crystal Palace Park 10. Boy on a Bus Holding a Biscuit, Lee 11. The Sky in a Mirror, Sydenham 12. Blue Plastic Bag, Crystal Palace 13. Light Reflected onto a Face, Forest Hill 14. Lipstick on a Disposable Cup, Bloomsbury 15. A Spoon and a Glass, Sydenham 16. Sliced Banana, Sydenham 17. Red and Yellow Tulip, Sydenham 18. Tereza, Pallant House The visit @tereza_cervenova and I made to Chichester last week came 10 years after another trip there to see the Christopher Wood exhibition at Pallant House. Back then we also visited the cathedral and a picture I took there of Tereza became the cover of the first edition of Eimear McBride’s novel “Strange Hotel”. I’ll do a post on that another time.

Most recent crop of phone shots: 1. Two Girls on a Train Between Rotterdam and Amsterdam 1 2. Two Girls on a Train Between Rotterdam and Amsterdam 2 3. Ashley Holding a Frog, Kilburn 4. Tim Pulling Indy’s Neck, Palmers Green 5. Carlos Slicing Bread, Rotterdam 6. Coffee, Amsterdam 7. White Ghost House with Road Markings, Sydenham

Containerhouse/Housecontainer, June 2025 Tree in a Park Being Renovated, June 2025 Sticks and Water, Sydenham Wells Park, February 2026 Car Park, Crystal Palace, June 2025

Venice, 25 February - 3 March 2026 Thank you @johnhallvenice

Venice March 2026 On my way back to the airport I took the longest boat trip available, from Zattere via Lido and Murano, making it nearly two hours. It gave me the time to look at the ‘tiny-mountain’ piece of wet tissue underneath the front window which kept changing as the light changed with the different directions the boat took. Total joy to observe, thank you @johnhallvenice for another eye-opening (and eye-soothing) week in Venice.

Two Ducks, Sydenham Wells Park, 17 February 2026 Three People Viewed from the 176 Bus, Dulwich, 14 February 2026 Last week I bought a new phone that has better optics from my previous one and an incredibly good quality x8 telephoto option (equivalent focal length of around 200mm). I used the x8 on the ducks, an image I wouldn’t have been able to achieve at this level of quality without it. I love a long lens, the flattening of the picture plane is right up my Flemish Primitives street. So happy with the ducks picture in particular. Thank you ducks 🦆❤️

In last weekend’s FT Magazine there was a feature on Ocean Vuong’s photography. It contained a quote stating that for him, photography was “a medium of unanimous affirmation”. Seeing that quote displayed so prominently baffled me a bit (you can see the quote in full on slide 7). Can there ever be such a thing as unanimous affirmation, where “nothing in its frame can be denied presence”? In my work I try to break through the directness of the medium, getting to the core of all the weirdness and contradictions of life. Here are some shots illustrating that, all taken on 35mm point and shoot cameras. 1. Meat, Paris, 2016 2. The Swimmer, Posadas, 2019 3. Two Trench Coats, Venice, 2019 4. Decapitated Tree, Stroud Green, 2015 5. The Acrobat, Sydney, 2016 6. Mirror, Wardrobe and Door, Sydenham, 2023

Yesterday I visited Peter Doig’s House of Music exhibition at the Serpentine gallery. Six years ago I photographed Peter for the FT Magazine (thank you @emma_bowkett for this commission!). That shoot took place in his studio where he also kept one of his Western Electric/Bell Labs sound systems which I ended up using as a backdrop for the portrait. These sound systems lie at the heart of the show where music and visual art intertwine. Peter happened to be there DJ-ing so I said hi and took a quick portrait of him. It’s a glorious and joyful exhibition and it’ll be closing soon, 8 February, so do catch it if you can. I visited it with my friend @tereza_cervenova who you can spot in one of the pictures above.

Latest crop of phone shots, spanning from mid November 2025 till now, 23 January 2026. 1. Self-Portrait at a Gallery, Hampstead 2. Dendermonde Station 3. Red Hand, Dendermonde 4. Two Parked Cars, Hackney 5. Rebecca’s Friend Chris on the Back of a Man, Dalston 6. Elliot, Hackney 7. Plane, Electricity Cables and a Street Light, Deptford 8. Bottle of Washing Up Liquid, Sydenham 9. Sunrise, De Klinge 10. Static Hair on a Train, Belgium 11. Berchem Station 12. Vivian Through the Mirror, Willesden

10 years ago this month it was the 40th anniversary of the Sydney Festival. To celebrate this, director Lieven Bertels had commissioned me to take 40 portraits of collaborators of the festival (artists, crew, visitors) across four continents in the summer of 2015. The 40 portraits went on display on billboard posters across Sydney city centre and the original c-types were shown in UNSW Gallery for the duration of the 2016 festival. It was the commission of a lifetime and it gave me the opportunity to photograph people who had long been on my wish list (Joanna Newsom, David Byrne, Sylvie Guillem, amongst others). I also got to know the Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed with whom I’ve since become closely associated, both on a personal and professional level and I met Robert (Bob) Wilson, who I collaborated with on an audio piece for my exhibition at Muziekgebouw Amsterdam in 2023. Bob passed away last year, as have several other people I photographed then. Times have also changed politically, to such an extent that now it wouldn’t be possible to undertake a commission like this. Back then we had no idea what was coming at us. This commission is one of the best things that ever happened to me. Thanks you so much @art.can.fly and the whole Sydney Festival team @sydney_festival ❤️. It was so good to work with you all and travel across the world to meet and photograph all these people. Here is a small selection of portraits, you can find more on my website. 1. James Thierrée, Paris 2. Sharon Jones, Boston 3. David Byrne, NYC 4. Joanna Newsom, LA 5. Simone Whetton, Sydney 6. Simon McBurney holding his daughter Mamie, London 7. Raimund Hoghe, Düsseldorf 8. Ontroerend Goed, Ghent 9. Robert Wilson, Water Mill, NY 10. Rokia Traoré, Brussels 11. Uncle Max Uelo, Sydney 12. Sylvie Guillem, Sydney 13. Archie Roach, Sydney 14. Wei Chunrong, Beijing 15. David Byrne poster in situ 16. Sharon Jones in the catalogue