Sebastian Schutyser was born in Bruges in 1968, and grew up in Congo. He took a degree in political science at the University of Ghent, and studied photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the same town. The link between our natural environment and the spiritual mark of humankind is an important element in his work. This clearly shows in his ‘Adobe Mosques of Mali’, for which he received international acclaim and the support of The Aga Khan Trust for Culture. His photographs were exhibited at the Noorderlicht Photography Festival, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the Deutsches Architektur Museum, the Rencontres de la Photographie Africaine de Bamako and the Great Mosque of Djenné, BOZAR in Brussels, the Antwerp Photography Museum and in Korea at the Clayarch Gimhae Museum. He undertook several photographic expeditions to the Rwenzori Mountains in Congo and Uganda. Since 2005 he has been working in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzebkistan and Azerbaijan as a freelance photographer for the Aga Khan Music Intiative in Central Asia. During the last seven years he has dedicated himself to a long-term project in Spain, called ‘Ermita’.