Dorette Kruger Labutte

Dorette Labutte was born in Witbank, Mpumalanga in 1980. After matriculating in 1999, she went on to study a degree in Multimedia at the University of Pretoria. In 2000 she decided bugger this and ran away, with her then partner, to the Western Cape to forge a “new” life.

She received her first analog camera in 1999 and started taking “happy snaps”.

In 2006 she did a short course in analog photography through The Stellenbosch Institute of Photographic Studies (SIPS) and in 2007 she “succumbed” to peer pressure and bought her very first DSLR. This is when her “Poetic Photography” was born.

Conceptual work makes her tick. She loves taking an emotion, a feeling, a situation, and forming it into a visual statement. She is inspired by life, whether it is the hard times that form us and makes us stronger, or the spiritual journeys that make us grow wiser.

She loves human form, and uses herself as a subject when creating a poetic piece. She keeps the images as real as possible with very little photo editing applied, but when it is, it is only done to enhance the message of the photograph.

Her camera has always been her therapist giving her the ability to capture her emotions and view them from an objective point of view...

The Stellenbosch Institute of Photography Studies (2006)