Career
Educated in Street Lucas, Hasselt and Technicum, Antwerp, she started as freelancer photographer in the eighties, and became fully independent in 1984. Until 1989 she was working mainly for the newspaper Het Belang van Limburg. With the late journalist Hans Klok she traveled through South America, covering the fate of the Amazon Rainforest and the elections in Chile.
Later that year they covered the revolution in Romania and the fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu for Het Belang van Limburg From that period on she was attached to the French agency Gamma, regularly providing pictures from hot spots around the world.
During the nineties she covered the orphans of Romania, Chernobyl 10 years later, spring in Albania, the first Iraq War, and the Jordanian and Kurdish refugee crisis. In the summer of 1992 the war in former Yugoslavia broke out and soon after the war in Bosnia, Sarajevo became her home base for the next two years.
Her war work was published in International magazines Stern, Paris Match, Time, Newsweek, New York Times Magazine, El Mundo and Belgian magazines De Standaard Magazine, De Morgen, Panorama. Simultaneously with the upcoming Belgian fashion designers, she began a career as fashion photographer.
She traveled to Milan and Paris, first _in 1989_ as commissioned photographer for ""Het Belang Van Limburg", later for the entire Belgian Press and for Designers such as Dries van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Dirk Bikkembergs, Raf Simons, Veronique Branquinho.
Mid 1990 Marleen joined the Dutch photo agency Hollandse Hoogte and started photographing for the Dutch Elle. The co-production with fashion editor Cara Schiffelers of the Japanese fashion icon Yohji Yamamoto was the start of a successful working relationship. Her portraits and fashion reports were published in Dutch Elle, Elegance, Glamour, Louisiana vie en Rose, Vrij Nederland, De Volkskrant magazine, Hollands Diep.
The Dutch National Geographic commissioned Marleen to photograph Antwerp and the diamond trade.
Since 2010 she regularly photographs travel stories for the Holland Herald, the KLM inflight magazine and for DSM, the Weekend supplement of "De Standaard", Belgium"s main www.standaard.be Flemish newspaper. In 2010, Marleen was honored with the Eikenloof Award of Heusden-Zolder, the village she originates from.
She is the first woman to receive this three yearly cultural reward for her career as photographer.
