Nick Verhaeghe (b. 1991, Knokke-Heist, Belgium) is a visual artist working at the intersection of memory, matter, and image. He studied photography at LUCA School of Arts (Narafi) and participated in an exchange program at Le75 in Brussels. He interned with photographer Jimmy Kets and later took masterclasses with Mashid Mohadjerin and Victor Verhelst.

His work has been shown internationally, including at Format Festival (UK & New Zealand), BredaPhoto (NL), Photoempauta (BR), and the Antwerp and Ostend Photo Biennales (BE). He has had solo exhibitions at Ingrid Deuss Gallery, Art et marges Museum, and others.

Verhaeghe is also active as an educator, giving masterclasses and lectures on low-toxicity and circular photography processes. He collaborates with academic and governmental institutions, including The Sustainable Darkroom (UK), Moridarkroom (BE), and FOD Nature & Forestry (BE).

In photography, as in architecture, nothing exists in isolation. Materials carry memory—transforming, fading, resurfacing. My work moves through this cyclical flow, where images don’t vanish but evolve. Photography, for me, is not a linear process—it’s circular.

I work with the residue of image-making: plant-based developers, reclaimed silver, exhausted bleaches. Waste materials are not discarded but transformed—what remains becomes a building block for what follows. The boundary between image and leftover blurs, just as layers of sediment carry echoes of what once was.

The image is not simply a capture; it is the result of a process in which chemistry, nature, and decay all co-author the final form. Depending on the plant used, prints may vary in tone, texture, or contrast—making the natural process itself a participant in the visual language.

I also explore beyond the photographic frame, incorporating etching and sculptural approaches that connect the image to materiality. This challenges photography’s two-dimensional tradition—opening it up, both conceptually and physically.

My practice exists in this dialogue: between memory and transformation, between what is fixed and what is in flux. Images are portals—not just to other spaces, but to shifting relations between the visible and invisible. In this circular approach, nothing is lost—everything becomes something again.