No one does this better than Flemish photographer Stephan Vanfleteren, who delivers what all great portrait photographers do – insight into the subject – while also providing endless amounts of information on human nature. If you pair seeing this show in Ghent with exploring the photo book by Antwerp-based photographer Isabel Miquel Arques (link), you could not know more about the personalities of Flemish celebrities short of meeting them personally.

Portret 1989-2009 is set in an old, once-forgotten building near the art centre Vooruit, but now it’s under renovation. In this in-between state, with its dusty floors and cobwebs in the corners of the dirty windows, it’s a perfect setting for Vanfleteren’s trademark black-and-white photos that never fail to make one stop short at first sight.

The show is made up of large-scale photos of well-known Flemings, tiny name tags affixed under each. But most of the Flemish who come here know who they all are without having to check. Another section finds a collage of smaller images across one wall of the warehouse- sized space – with no name tags. It’s fun, in fact, to try to name them all – or at least which movie you just saw them in.

There’s cyclist Tom Boonen looking reflective, aging rock singer Arno looking tired, “chicken artist” Koen Vanmechelen looking weird and actor Jan Decleir looking like he wants to be grumpy, but just can’t. Some images are so spot-on in revealing how the Flemish view their heroes that you begin to wonder if this is the way they really are or simply the way Vanfleteren knows the public wants to see them. Still, images don’t lie: it’s hard to imagine Flemish crooner Eddy Wally being able to pull off a look like politician and diplomat Étienne Davignon (pictured) – or vice versa.

There are very few women in this show – although one playful portrait of lingerie designer Muriel Scherre finds her drinking from her pin-up decorated coffee mug. But Vanfleteren seems to prefer the grizzled, five-o-clock shadow look of men both young and old. Regardless of their public or personal stature, he brings their vulnerability to the fore – such as the case of a shirtless Gabriel Rios in front of a rainy window or Marcel van Maele, the Flemish poet and sculpture, blind for nearly 20 years, who died in July. The photo is probably recent – a droopy-eyed man coming to the end of a long and difficult battle.

Until 3 December

Wintercircus Mahy

Lammerstraat 11, Ghent

www.lannoo.be/portret