What stories lie behind the thousands of truck drivers who drive on Belgium’s motorways every day? Photographer Koen Degroote sought an answer to that question. He visited motorway car parks for the exhibition ‘Trucking traditions in pictures’.
De Groote went out with truck drivers to capture their lifestyle and habits. The result is the photo expo ‘At home on the road. Trucker traditions in pictures’. How do truckers live? What habits do they stick to when they are away from home? How do they spend their free time along the road and how do they interact with each other? That is what the photographer set out to find out.
Race bike
His reportage work produced some remarkable images such as that of a man riding a racing bicycle across a motorway car park. “It turned out to be a Polish driver who liked to escape the hustle and bustle of the motorways with his racing bike after his working day,” says the photographer.
His search for the perfect image did not always go smoothly. “I also encountered resistance from drivers who preferred not to be photographed. A motorway car park like this also feels a bit like the Tower of Babel: so many different languages are spoken. Fortunately, I can pull off a bit of a battle in Russian, which made it easier to approach drivers.”
Geography teacher
Similarly, the photographer spoke to a Belarusian man who had retrained from a geography teacher to a truck driver. “By transporting goods with a truck, he could simply earn more money than staying employed as a teacher in his home country,” he said.
At the motorway car park along the E17 in Kalken, De Groote bumped into Romanian truck drivers gathered there. “Because they are away from home for months on end, they naturally seek rapprochement with each other and try to create a ‘home feeling’ for a while in such a car park.”
The exhibition is part of a heritage project around the 50th anniversary of the E17 and will be on display at the Zwalm East Flanders library until 5 July 2024 before moving to the Landegem library from 5 July to 19 July and to Deinze from 19 July to 2 August. From August, the expo will also visit the region around Lochristi.
More info on the ’50 years of E17′ project can be found here.
