Stephan Vanfleteren was born in Kortrijk, Belgium, in 1969. He studied photography at the Sint Lucas instituut in Brussels (1988-1992). From 1993 to 2009, he worked as a freelance photographer for the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. Alongside his assignments for the newspaper, he worked constantly on personal projects. Recent years have seen him working on commissions from various museums, exhibiting his work internationally and publishing his photographs in newspapers and magazines around the world, including Le Monde (FR), De Volkskrant (NL), The New York Times (US) and De Standaard (BE).