After eleven years in Brussels, Camille recently moved back to Ghent. She built her career in production while living between Saint-Gilles and Forest, but still returns to Brussels regularly — now by train, in just under thirty minutes. Moving back to Ghent hasn’t changed her relationship with the capital; if anything, it has shifted her perspective on the city, on work, and on what she wants from this next chapter.
You recently moved back to Ghent after more than a decade in Brussels. Why did you originally leave Ghent for Brussels?
I studied at the academy in Antwerp for four years and then moved back to Ghent for a while, but after some time it started feeling too small. I think I needed to open up a bit more, and Brussels really gave me that.
There’s something about the anonymity of Brussels that makes you feel freer. You’re surrounded by so many cultures, languages, and ways of living that there’s a certain ease to the city. You can walk around however you want and nobody really notices or judges you. That openness changes you. At the time I didn’t know many people there yet, and strangely enough that was part of the appeal. Even when you know a lot of people in Brussels, the city still feels big and anonymous. You bump into people in the park sometimes, but mostly everyone is doing their own thing.
And professionally, was Brussels also the obvious place to be?
Definitely. Especially in production, Brussels is where things happen. There are production houses in Antwerp too, but Brussels has always had a much bigger scene.
I actually moved there while working for the lifestyle magazine Sabato. Two weeks after I moved, I lost my job — which was quite unexpected — but it also pushed me into figuring things out quickly. I started working for another magazine, doing some picture editing, organising shoots, and slowly moved further into production. What I loved from the beginning was that combination between creative thinking and coordination. You’re constantly connecting people, locations, photographers, stylists, clients — it’s like an endless puzzle.
You worked in production for many years. How would you describe what your role actually involved?
Production is very broad. It can mean casting, finding locations, coordinating stylists and makeup artists, proposing photographers or directors, organising shoots, managing budgets, post-production… It’s really from A to Z.
At Crush, where I worked for the past 4 years, I eventually became managing director of the photo department I founded within the production house. In the beginning, I was much more hands-on as a producer, but over time my role became more strategic and coordinating from above. I built the department from scratch, shaping its creative direction, choosing the style and talent, and overseeing its overall growth. A project would come in, we’d make estimates, discuss creative needs with the client, and once approved by the producers, my role would shift toward overseeing execution, managing budgets, solving problems when needed, and helping win new projects. But what people often underestimate is how much production is really about relationships and matchmaking.
Matchmaking?
Yes — everyone immediately thinks about matching the right photographer to the right brand, which is obviously important, but it goes much further than that. You’re also matching personalities. If a client is very subtle and quiet, you know certain crew members or makeup artists will fit better than others. You’re constantly trying to create the right chemistry between people. And because production is such a trust-based industry, relationships become incredibly important.
Is that also what you’re looking for in this next phase of your career?
Very much. I think that’s exactly where my head is now. For a long time I worked in the classic agency and commercial structure: agencies pitching campaigns, production houses executing them, constantly competing against other teams. Ten years ago I loved that energy. Every project was new, every pitch was exciting.
But after fifteen years, I realised I’m much more interested in building long-term relationships with brands directly. I would love to work more freelance and in-house with brands, as part of the internal team. There are certain brands I genuinely loved working with over the years — Eastpak, Bellerose, Delvaux, Samsonite and Wouters & Hendrix — because there was a real collaboration. You get to know the brand deeply, you understand what kind of imagery fits them, which talent makes sense, how they work. The work becomes stronger because you’re building something together over time.
And at the same time, the industry itself is also changing quite rapidly.
Very rapidly. The whole business model is shifting. Agencies are producing more in-house, AI is changing workflows, production houses and animation studios are all trying to redefine themselves.
I’m not anti-AI at all. I think it’s here to stay and it can genuinely help workflows. But we’re clearly in a transition moment where nobody fully knows yet what the future structure will look like. At the same time, budgets are changing too. Fashion and retail brands often have to navigate tighter budgets than big commercial clients, but ironically those are the projects I often enjoyed the most creatively. So I think I’m trying to find a new way of working within that changing reality.
What attracts you more to brands and fashion-oriented projects?
Partly the relationships, but also simply the product itself. I’m more personally drawn to certain fashion or lifestyle brands than to producing a campaign for a supermarket or an insurance company. Of course the commercial campaigns often have bigger budgets, but they also come with many more opinions, layers, approvals, and pressure. The projects I’m most proud of are usually the ones where there’s an aesthetic sensitivity. That doesn’t mean luxury necessarily — it’s more about making something visually meaningful.
Belgium has a strong reputation creatively. Do you think that also applies to production?
I think Belgium is definitely known internationally for fashion and design. For production specifically, maybe less. But what we are known for is being very flexible and efficient with smaller budgets. Foreign teams would often come shoot in Brussels because it was significantly cheaper than Paris or other bigger cities. Belgian crews are very used to making things work with limited means. There’s a kind of agility in the Belgian creative scene. You get a budget and immediately start thinking: okay, how can we make this happen?
You lived in Saint-Gilles and Forest for more than a decade. What kept you in Brussels for so long?
Honestly, I always thought Brussels would be temporary. I even kept my apartment in Ghent in the beginning because I thought: let’s see what happens after one year. But then one year became two, then three, then eleven.
Brussels has this energy where people constantly arrive and leave again. That can sound unstable, but it also makes people very open. You meet people quickly there. Even casual conversations happen naturally. And the city keeps surprising you. Even after ten years, there were still neighbourhoods, restaurants, galleries or cafés I had never discovered. There’s always another layer. At the same time, Saint-Gilles and Forest changed enormously over those years. When I first moved there, you barely heard Dutch in Parc de Forest. Now you hear Flemish everywhere.
Brussels also has a more difficult side.
Of course. It’s really a love-hate relationship. Sometimes the city is rough, intense, chaotic. You become mentally adapted to that when you live there. Now that I don’t live there anymore, I notice it differently again when I arrive. You suddenly see the chaos more sharply. But somehow that rawness is also part of Brussels. It’s not polished, and that’s precisely why it feels alive.
So why move back to Ghent now?
Several reasons came together. The commute had become exhausting. I was driving back and forth constantly for work as Crush was based in Ghent and losing hours in traffic every day. At a certain point it became unsustainable. And then there’s also family life. Having more space, a garden, being closer to family — those things start mattering differently. Ghent feels very familiar to me. I don’t necessarily know if I would call it “home” in a romantic sense, but it’s deeply familiar. At the same time, moving back didn’t mean cutting ties with Brussels at all.
Because you still go very often.
Very often. The funny thing is that now I actually take the train much more than before. We live very close to Gent-Sint-Pieters station, so I’m in Brussels in twenty-eight minutes. It honestly takes as long as crossing Brussels itself sometimes.
I still go to see friends, visit galleries, have lunch somewhere, walk around — all the little rituals that were part of my life there. It’s less about nightlife now and more about reconnecting with the atmosphere. Just being in the city again for a few hours. That’s also something I really like about living in Ghent now: Brussels still feels completely accessible. You don’t have to live there full-time to keep a relationship with the city.
You’re currently in between jobs. How does that feel?
People keep asking me if I’m stressed. And honestly: no. If they keep asking, maybe I will become stressed eventually. But right now it genuinely feels more like a reset. I think sometimes certain chapters simply need to close before something else can appear.
I also feel confident because I know what I can bring to a brand or a team. Production is such a trust-based field. Reliability matters enormously. I’ve spent years learning how to solve problems quickly, how to coordinate people, how to keep projects moving under pressure. That’s not something you unlearn.
So I don’t think my next step will come from finding a traditional job description online. It will probably come through conversations, through reaching out to brands I admire, through collaborations that grow organically. And honestly, that feels much more exciting to me right now.
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Camille is one of the 73 locals who has generously contributed to our city guide 'Brussels by locals' by sharing her favourite spots in town.
Interview: Sisse Bro
Photography: Stephanie De Smet, around Parc Duden