Katrien de Blauwer was born in the small provincial town of Ronse (Belgium). After a troubled childhood, She moved to Ghent at a young age to study painting. Later she attended the Royal Academy in Antwerp to study fashion. A study she abandoned. It was at that time she made her first collage books, actually studies and moodbooks for fashion collections. At a later age she began collecting, cutting and recycling images as therapeutic self investigation.
Belgium –
KT: How did you get into photography? When/What was your first encounter with photograph/collages?
KDB: My first encounter with collages was with the great notebooks of Peter Beard. It’s quite fascinating that apart from being a photographer, he also makes collage notebooks that are a mixture of magazine fragments, parts of pictures, leaves, and animals.
I like the work because of it looks very spontaneous and unique.
KT: Your photography talks about your inner fantasy thereby celebrating your
personal life, body and sexuality. How did you build this special interest?
KDB: It is something that has grown in me since I was a child as a kind of necessity, an obsession. I’m like a sponge, an extremely sensitive person. Creating these works is not a source of joy, but more a neurotic act, without which I would feel unhappy. For me, it’s important to get rid of all distraction, that’s why I like to be at home, with my books, my work, and magazines near me.
KT: “My collages are made of photos, but they are not pictures. I’m using photography, but I’m not a photographer. Or maybe I’m a photographer without a camera” yet you have published three beautiful books ‘Still’, ‘I Do Not Want to Disappear Silently Into the Night’ and ‘Inappropriate Repetitions’. What do you like about photography in a book-format?
KDB: It’s completely different to show your work in a book or to show it at an exhibition. Both have their limitations, opportunities, and difficulties. My job is small, which makes it perfect to print at its original size in a book. One of the difficulties in printing it into a book is that you lose most of the feeling of the old decayed paper.
I like photography in a book for the fact that it’s not limited in time and you can look at the works in the comfort of your home. A good book becomes a work of art on its own.
