Katherine Longly (BE) met Blieke, Nicole and their little dog ‘Plume’ (feather) on a December evening, a few days before Christmas. While she was taking pictures of illuminated caravans in a campsite on the outskirts of Brussels, a man came out of his cabin, and asked her what she was doing there. She apologized, but he followed: “come inside and have a beer with us instead.” They became friends. They then invited her to various wacky parties and told her their amazing life story.

With this book Longly plays with the prejudices that we all tend to have, no matter how much we try to avoid them. The photographer builds her story calmly but purposefully and then reveals the true history of the protagonist. As a reader we are being misled and thus confronted with our own short-sightedness. Longly does this with extremely sincere and entertaining images of this partying couple, which yields a pleasant book and a wise lesson.

Hernie & Plume is a story about social mobility, stereotypes, aging and, most of all, love.