Colette der Kinderen

“I think being a creator, everything can be inspiring and everything is influencing my work”

Intercru: Where are you from? Where do you live/work now?

Colette: I’m from the Netherlands, originally from a small city in the South. When I was 17 I wanted to go to Australia, but I guess I couldn’t go there by myself before I was 18. So I decided to move to Spain for a year to go somewhere my parents hadn’t really been or taken me.

I didn’t want to leave or go back, but my parents came to get me to go to University and study. So I ended up in Amsterdam studying Business Administration at the University. After finishing my Masters, I felt that Amsterdam had gotten too small and I wanted to be closer to nature. The Mediterranean always attracted me, so I moved to Barcelona. This is where I developed myself as a photographer and where I’m still living and working from.

How did you get started in photography?

I’ve always loved photography, ever since I was little. I walked around with a Fisher-Price plastic indestructible analog camera and the other day my dad even reminded me that I didn’t want to go to University... I wanted to study photography.

Somehow while I was studying I forgot about hobbies and when I finished my time at University, I missed creating so much. I felt I had lost an important part of myself. So I actively went to search for it again.

At some point, I organized a nighttime music event promoting creators from different disciplines because I knew a lot of talented people, but I wasn’t creating anything myself. I figured I could show their work to people like me who had forgotten about creativity while studying.

In Amsterdam, I got excited about photography again because of a boyfriend who was a photographer and I became a regular at Foam (Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam). Then when I moved to Barcelona I ended up with a photographer again and this time I picked up a camera myself again and never stopped shooting. I started shooting lots and lots of film. It was only a couple of years later that I bought a digital camera. I still prefer film always though.

Where do you find creative inspiration for your work?

I always think this is an intangible answer. I think being a creator, EVERYTHING can be inspiring and everything is influencing my work. I’ll try to explain how I feel when I feel the need to take a certain picture, which I guess is the feeling of being inspired.

I see a light, I see patterns, I see a combination of colors... anything that makes me feel that something is beautiful. And beautiful can be very unconventional for me. I can train myself to focus on new things and see beauty in new things. I guess this happens by analyzing work of others, from the cinema or photographers... what makes their work feel the way I feel? And then when I think I found the why, I try to use this technique while photographing something.

What do you love the most about shooting film? What’s your least favorite part?

I love the entire process- it’s calming and there’s no stress involved. You take the time to find the shot, there’s a limited number of pictures in the end. The moment of seeing your pictures is magic. It’s all very peaceful.

My least favorite part is that it’s getting more and more expensive every day, but more and more clients are valuing analog photography.

What’s your favorite movie of all time?

I watch a looooooooot of movies, and this is a very difficult question. There are tons of movies that are my favorite, but I have to say that the movie that influences my life the most and made me fall in love with the medium is La Meglio Gioventù (The Best of Youth). A 6-hour Italian epic from Marco Tullio Giordano following the lives of two brothers from the 60s to the 2000s.

I can watch the 6 hours in one breath and would be happy to stay for another 3 if only there was more. Simply mesmerizing.

What was your favorite subject in school?

I guess gymnastics hahaha. I have always been very active and sportive, so I loved everything that had to do with sports. And I loved history, art, and languages. I read tons and tons of books in Dutch for example.

I guess I always liked school quite a lot, I just never ever studied outside of school. This bit me in the ass afterwards at University when studying was actually necessary haha.

Do you prefer cats or dogs?

Ohhh definitely dogs! I’m very much a dog person. But I’m an animal lover in general, so any animal is better than the average human to me! ;)

What’s your favorite thing to do in your spare time?

Discovering new places, traveling, even though it’s close to home. I always want to discover. And then taking pictures- I can’t stop taking pictures haha! And I love watching movies and reading. I have an obsession with documentaries and I read at night to relax.

What’s the best vacation you’ve ever had?

I can’t pick any new discovery over another, but there’s one trip that now seems unbelievable to me, because of all the adventures lived.

It’s a trip I made through Asia, but then particularly the part where we traveled through Vietnam for an entire month. My friend and I bought 2 motorcycles in the South and a hammock and we went on those bikes via the jungle to the North where we sold the bikes again.

All the ridiculously crazy adventures we lived on the way are insane now. Our passports and phones got stolen, we stole them back, all of our clothes got given away to an entire village. We saw the most beautiful lost roads and met the most beautiful people on the way.

Then another one is a trip I made to Panama and Colombia, but especially the trip on a sailboat from Panama to Colombia... I will NEVER forget. Four days on the open sea, without seeing land, 7 meter waves and a captain in the water in the middle of the night snorkeling to see where best to steer to get us of a sandbank. Whales, dolphins, white sand, palm trees, desert islands, and I have never been so sick in my life, but I would do it over again any day.

What’s your favorite season/time of the year?

I love all seasons, but I definitely feel the most free in summer.

Who is your personal hero?

Ohhh, I don’t think I have one, everybody turns out to be human haha! But what I most admire in someone is someone who can see the bright side of things and is always trying to be the happiest they can be.

I guess my grandmother is really a personal hero. She is the strongest woman I have ever met. She survived the war, got her house bombarded, had 8 kids and was always elegant and perfectly ladylike. But most of all, she didn’t deal with any small troubles or bullshit. She’s very pragmatic and real, but not in an insensitive kind of way. She cared about the things that are important, but not about the bullshit. Strongest woman ever.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Spend more time on trying to find out who YOU are, not who you should be to fit in here or there. And never stop expressing yourself and always create.