PANOPTIK opens doors that are rarely even ajar: those of three prisons in Brussels. For over ten years, Cédric Gerbehaye shared the daily lives of inmates and prison staff. Building on the documentary film he directed (La Peine), this book—structured as an investigation and a journal —brings his images into dialogue with a collection of exceptional photographic archives— anthropometric portraits dating back to the 1910s and previously unpublished documents from the prison administration— to tell a history of incarceration spanning over a century. At the crossroads of documentary, history and art, this book reveals the need for a profound transformation of the prison landscape, in Belgium as elsewhere in Europe. Enlightened by texts from two historians and a prison director, PANOPTIK invites us to rethink our relationship with punishment and the very idea of humanism that we wish to uphold.

In 1947, the partition of India created an artificial border, dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Since then, tensions have continued to rise, leading to uprisings and human rights violations. The Line of Control, which initially was meant to be temporary, has become a de facto border. Kashmir. Wait & See is a visual essay that documents this forgotten conflict through the daily lives of the people who endure it, in a highly strategic mountainous region of spectacular beauty, to which Cédric Gerbehaye obtained exceptional access. His striking photographs, the result of several years of field investigation, are presented alongside historical and vernacular images, as well as texts by Nathalène Reynolds and Sultan Ali.

Every year since its creation, ImageSingulières has invited a photographer to take up a residency in its region. After 16 years in Sète, the association moved to Aumessas in the Cévennes National Park in 2024.Cédric is the first author to be invited to immerse himself in these new landscapes, with a carte blanche residency.  

Documenting the different stages of the fight, trying to translate the unspeakable, anchoring it in our collective history, such was the work of Cédric Gerbehaye and Caroline Lamarche with the support of the Tivoli University Hospital and the City of La Louvière. More than a year of immersion in the pandemic in the proximity of care workers, which is reflected in the exhibition ZOONOSE at the Mill – Ianchelevici Museum and the eponymous book.

What does it mean to be ‘at home’? In a world of movement, in a Europe riddled with questions of identity, does belonging to one’s place of origin still have any meaning? This is the question that led Cédric Gerbehaye, a photographer accustomed to remote conflict zones, the Congo, the Middle East or South Sudan, to return home to Belgium. He shows a country shaken by political and economic crises, but deeply alive, far from the summary interpretations and the “Belgianness” to which it is too often reduced.

ImageSingulières is a contemporary documentary photographic festival inaugurated in Sète in 2009 and recognised in the European cultural landscape. Each year, a photographer is invited to take a fresh look at the town. This book is the work of the Belgian photographer Cédric Gerbehaye. His black and white photographs transcend the port area which are presented from an unexpected angle, between fictional decoration and distinctive social realism.

Land of Cush refers to the Ancient Egyptian realm of Cush, as mentioned in the Bible, which included the same territory now occupied by South Sudan. It is also the theme chosen by the South Sudanese for the creation of their national anthem.

The day before the first anniversary of South Sudan’s independence, in July 2012, I continued a work I had started two years earlier. It bears witness to the time of the birth of a new nation. From the preparations for the referendum to the establishment of independence, this story documents the aftermath of Africa’s longest civil war.

Congo in Limbo is the photographic essay that Cédric Gerbehaye has produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the fruit of time spent and rigorous commitment. The country is observed here from a point of view that reflects its complexity and the interweaving of a little-known conflict.

Stephen Smith (journalist and author, specialist in Africa), Andrew Philip (researcher on the DRC for Amnesty International) and Christian Caujolle (founder and artistic advisor of the VU’ agency and gallery) shed relevant light on this visual and journalistic investigation, which constitutes an essential testimony on Africa’s Great Lakes.