Coffee with Karin

Karin Bultje is a first year mature photography student at the University of East London. We sat down over a cup of coffee and had a chat about her art, her life, and what the future holds for her.

What kind of pictures do you take?

I’m mainly interested in portraits and documentary. But I also like taking landscape and street view.

What do you look for in a subject?

When I take pictures of people, I look for people who look interesting. I look for personality rather than perfect features. I look for a face that tells me something.

When someone looks at your photographs, what do you want them to see?

I want them to feel, more than see I want them to feel that the picture touches them in some way, that it evokes an emotion.

How long have you been taking pictures?

I have been taking pictures since I was about 10. I wanted to be a photographer when I was a child.

What made you decide to come to university as a mature student?

When I was younger, I didn’t have the chance to go to university. It wasn’t as easy to study then. My daughter, who studies fine art, persuaded me. I have three children who are all grown up now. So it is easier for me to devote time to it now.

What does the future look like for you?

It’s really hard to say. I don’t have a fixed idea of what I’m going to do afterwards yet. But I would love to do something with documentary photography of social issues.

For example I am going to go to Indonesia this year to do portraits there. I am going this summer and then I am going back in the autumn, with my classmates. We want to do a documentary of photography of people there who are of dutch descent, who were left behind after WW2, when Indonesia became independent.

Because they are discriminated against, they don’t have any papers to prove that they are Dutch. So the Dutch government has been ignoring them and the indonesian government doesn’t want to know them, so they are stateless and a lot of them have to resort to begging to stay alive, in slums, it is just awful.