About This Image

Print is dated on verso. Notes written in pencil on face below image - in French - most likely describes process.

This image was used as cover for TC Boyle book, "Wild Child," Penguin, NY, 2009.

Lejeune was born in 1885 in Brussels into a middle class family. He studied at the University of Liege in Belgium to be a chemical engineer, and developed a successful career in this field. He had one son, Jean, and died in 1946. Lejeune was really an amateur photographer, who practiced photography on the weekends and who was very modest about his photographic work. He would take walks in the fields and forests in the South of Brussels documenting the vanishing landscapes. In 1920 Lejeune met Leonard Misonne, and they became close friends. Misonne taught him how to work with oil and bromoil processes, and supposedly it was Misonne who persuaded Lejeune to enter an International Photography contest in Paris where he won the Bronze Medal.