Solo show Daniëlle van Zadelhoff - Gallery Ysebaert
Vernissage: 7 februari 2026
exhibition: 6 februari – 22 maart 2026
In February, Dutch photographer Daniëlle van Zadelhoff will present her monochrome works in Belgium for the first time at Gallery Ysebaert. In Daniëlle van Zadelhoff's portraits, vulnerability and mystery meet in a subtle way. The faces she captures have a quiet but intense power. At the same time, they tell a story of fragility and openness, a story that cannot be fully fathomed and can only be partially understood.
With her camera, Van Zadelhoff shows what vulnerability really looks like. She shows people without masks; intense, honest, and recognizable. Her work touches on subjects from everyday life and invites the viewer to connect, feel emotions, and discover what often remains hidden.
The tension between visible and hidden, between light and dark, is created by her use of chiaroscuro. This technique, known from the Renaissance, in which great masters such as Caravaggio and Rembrandt used light to create depth, emotion, and mystery, refers to the past in Van Zadelhoff's work. At the same time, her work feels very contemporary; classical drama is subtly combined with modern visual language.
Her portraits invite you to pause, look, and experience what unfolds between light and shadow, a world full of vulnerability and mystery.
February 5 private preview with music by Zefiro Torna
On February 5, we will be holding a private preview where you can be among the first to discover the exhibition. During this evening, the ensemble Zefiro Torna (Lore Binon & Jurgen De Bruyn) will give an atmospheric concert, in which music and images come together. Their new CD SOMNIA will be presented, with a cover featuring a work by Daniëlle van Zadelhoff as a visual translation of their musical world.
Would you like to attend this private preview? Please feel free to contact us.
This special evening is a prelude to the opening on February 7, when the entire exhibition will be presented.
About Daniëlle van Zadelhoff
It was not until 2013 that Dutch artist Daniëlle van Zadelhoff picked up a camera for the first time. One of the first images she captured through her lens was that of a mother and child walking at the train station in Antwerp. A simple, everyday composition, but when viewing it, Daniëlle felt something unexpected: an emotion, a look, an attitude that touched her deeply. From that moment on, she fully embraced the medium of photography, focusing on capturing the essence of everyday life: vulnerability and small moments of emotion that go unnoticed. With a camera and a day course in photography, she discovered that images sometimes express better what words cannot say.
The essence of Zadelhoff's work lies in emotion and purity. Her images are not traditional portraits; they are not exclusively about the person, but about the feeling that the image evokes. The process begins with a confidential conversation with the model, after which they intuitively develop a visual language that is both personal and recognizable to the viewer.
A characteristic of her style is chiaroscuro: the subtle interplay between light and dark, which reinforces the tension between the visible and the hidden, between consciousness and the subconscious. This technique, familiar from the Flemish Primitives and the great masters of the Renaissance, gives her work a classical foundation, but remains modern through its contemporary themes.
Wat Daniëlle van Zadelhoff bijzonder maakt, is hoe snel haar werk internationaal is opgepikt en te zien is geweest in musea en tentoonstellingen over de hele wereld, van Miami tot Istanbul, van Boekarest tot Tabriz en van Parijs tot Londen. Nu presenteert zij haar nieuwe monochrome werken voor de eerste keer in België.
Her photography speaks the same universal language of human emotion, vulnerability, and presence everywhere. These are images that invite you to pause and feel what is happening between light and shadow.