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PODCAST

De Donkere Kamer (English)

De Donkere Kamer is the podcast for photographers who want to grow, behind the camera and in their business. Twice a week, host and photographer Kaat Celis shares a new episode: one solo conversation with her own reflections on creativity and craft, and one in-depth interview with respected names in international photography, including Anton Corbijn, Christopher Anderson, David Campany, and Harry Gruyaert. Together, these conversations explore what it takes to keep growing as a photographer,

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All Episodes

00:22:07

#70 - What if it's already good enough?

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/10/03

How much of your energy do you give away to what others think of you? In this episode, Kaat shares why she started taking her own stage, why copying slows down your growth, and what a mentoring client with a corporate background taught her about the fear of not being good enough. Plus an exercise you can start today.What you'll learn in this episodeWhy Kaat stopped giving away her stage and became the face of De Donkere Kamer herself, and what it takes to show your true coloursWhy being yourself

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01:03:01

#69 - From Belgium to 28 American States: Eva...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/09/26

What happens when a girl from a small Belgian village chases her American dream, and then spends six years listening to the dreams of American girls? My guest today is Belgian photographer and filmmaker Eva Verbeeck. She had visited more than 45 countries before she turned 25, lived in the US for many years and now works from Amsterdam. Her portraits have appeared in Le Monde, National Geographic, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel and The Telegraph.We recorded this conversation at CC De Factorij in

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00:32:06

#68 - Intuition in photography: lessons from Peter...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/09/23

If intuition is so central to photography, why do we give it so little room? That question stayed with me after my masterclass with Magnum photographer Peter van Agtmael, in which he called intuition the core of his work.In this episode I look at what intuition is for a photographer, what drowns it out, and how you can call it up. I talk honestly about how I slip into autopilot during podcast interviews myself, and what happens when I let go of my preparation. I share what a photographer from

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00:55:52

#67 - Live from Arles: Harry Gruyaert on the love...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/09/17

My guest today is one of the first photographers in Europe to work entirely in color, and the first guest to return to this podcast for a second time. Harry Gruyaert once dreamed of becoming a film director, until pop art and a trip to Morocco in the late 1970s pulled him toward photography instead. He has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1982 and has photographed the United States, Morocco, Europe, India and his own country, Belgium, in books including Made in Belgium and Roots.We recorded this

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00:27:34

#66 - Pattern recognition for photographers: how to...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/09/15

Last episode I took you through five insights from Tony Robbins' seminar Unleash the Power Within. By popular demand, here's part two, because there's one insight I wanted to unpack much further: pattern recognition.In this episode I zoom in on two patterns I recognize in myself, patterns I also see constantly in the photographers I work with. The first is about control and safety, and how I build up resistance before I've even had the chance to feel anything. The second is about how

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00:45:51

#65 - Carolina Arantes, National Geographic Explorer,...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/09/10

My guest today is a Brazilian visual storyteller who lives between France and Brazil. Carolina Arantes grew up in São Paulo, studied photography and journalism, and later earned a master's degree in cultural project development. Questions of gender identity and the lasting effects of colonial history run through her work, which she develops in personal projects alongside the communities she photographs. She has received the Firecracker Grant and the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation Grant, was

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00:56:12

#64 - 5 insights from Tony Robbins' UPW seminar for...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/09/08

Last week I sat in an arena in Cologne with 15,000 people, at Tony Robbins' seminar Unleash the Power Within. Four days, from early morning until late at night, together with five other entrepreneurial women from my Female Leaders club.In this episode I take you through five insights I brought home from there, and they apply just as much to your photography practice as to your life. Pattern recognition, and how a pattern of carelessness once got me stuck in a long insurance case. Repetition is

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00:27:48

#63 - How to Build a Personal Brand as a...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/09/02

Last time I told you why personal branding matters more than ever. Today I'll show you how to actually approach that, as a photographer, in 2026. I take you through my own path: starting a podcast as long form content, showing myself on my website, writing an about page (without AI, please), and figuring out what truly sets me apart from other photographers. I talk about a photographer I coach one-on-one who has the gift of putting people at ease, and about another who is a storyteller and

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00:26:39

#62 - Personal branding for photographers: Why It...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/09/01

I’m going to tell you something you might not expect from someone who’s been sharing her personal story in her content for years: I wasn’t really into personal branding myself. For years, I built De Donkere Kamer without ever putting a face to it. In this episode—part 1 of a two-part series—I’ll explain what made me change my mind and why personal branding matters more today than ever before. There’s never been so much content, never so much AI-generated clutter, and an audience that’s both more

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00:37:09

#61 - What a trip to Alpe d'Huez taught me about...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/08/27

This summer I set off on my bike from our house in the Auvergne, with Alpe d'Huez as the finish line. Four days, 500 kilometers and roughly 7,500 meters of elevation gain, on my own, from one chambre d'hôte to the next. I did it to cheer on my husband Rik, who climbed the col together with thirty colleagues from Mediafin for Climbing for Life, in support of the Diabetes Liga.In this episode, I take you along. Not as a travel report, but as a mirror. Because everything I ran into along the

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00:58:09

#60 - Paolo Woods on photography, research and...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/08/25

What do you do when a subject simply isn't photogenic? Paolo Woods, born in The Hague and raised in Florence, built his entire career around that question. From an investigation into the oil industry to a book on tax havens and the five-year project Happy Pills on the pharmaceutical industry, he keeps choosing subjects where his first reaction is "oh no, what am I actually going to photograph here." In this episode, recorded during Les Rencontres d'Arles, Paolo talks about why

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00:35:09

#59 - Why that restlessness during your holiday has...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/08/20

Do you feel restless the moment you go on holiday, while your business simply quiets down? In this solo episode, Kaat walks you through the difference between taking rest and actually experiencing it, and explains why a summer income gap is rarely a coincidence. She shares how she finds rest herself, not by sitting still, but by staying in motion, why the classic work-life balance doesn't work for her, and which questions you can ask yourself to figure out what your ideal holiday actually looks

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00:50:36

#58 - From Magnum Photos to the Banlieue: William Keo...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/08/18

Recorded live at Les Rencontres d'Arles, this episode brings you into conversation with World Press Photo winner William Keo, a French photographer born into a family of Cambodian refugees. His work has taken him from NGO assignments in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and the Syrian refugee crisis, to conflict zones in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Israel/Palestine, and eventually into Magnum Photos, where he was represented from 2021 to 2024. William talks openly about being an introvert in an

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00:32:34

#57 - What a week at the end of the world does to...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/08/13

What happens when a photographer who's never taught before finally says yes? In this episode, Kaat takes you to Estancia El Condor, 40,000 hectares of untouched land at the foot of the Andes, where in February 2027 she's hosting, together with Dutch photographer Bastiaan Woudt, his very first workshop. Eight spots, one estancia, no phone signal, and a photographer whose work hangs in the Rijksmuseum and the Getty Museum.Kaat talks about the two trips she's already made to this place

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00:59:38

#56 - "It's not my voice, it's ours": Shirley den...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/08/11

For 25 years, Shirley den Hartog was photographer Erwin Olaf's manager, and today she leads the Estate Erwin Olaf as its director. In this episode, she looks back on his lifelong dream to be exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, a wish that came true two years after his death with the exhibition Freedom.Shirley talks about the arrangement that defined their partnership for almost three decades: she took care of the business, he took care of the art. She shares how that trust shaped his

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01:10:16

#55 - Nadav Kander: The electricity between two pictures

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/08/06

My guest today grew up in Johannesburg and has lived and worked in London since the 1980s. He started photographing at thirteen and learned part of the craft in the darkroom of the South African Air Force. He won the Prix Pictet in 2009 for Yangtze: The Long River, and that same year The New York Times Magazine dedicated an entire issue to his series Obama's People. In 2019, Steidl published The Meeting, his first book devoted entirely to portraiture. This September, a new exhibition called The

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00:36:52

#54 - Back from summer break, with news from the end...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2026/08/04

After a full month of summer break, De Donkere Kamer is back. I'm taking you through my summer between France and Belgium, from Les Rencontres d'Arles to a conversation with photographer Nadav Kander in Ibiza, and sharing my big news along the way: a photography workshop in Patagonia and a new season of live shows.At Les Rencontres d'Arles, I felt a photography world wrestling with uncertainty and change, partly because of the heat and the wildfires in the region. From now on, I'm

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00:43:21

#12 - Clément Chéroux, Director of Fondation Henri...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2025/08/01

My guest today is the director of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris. Clément Chéroux is a French photography historian and curator who previously held senior curatorial positions at the Centre Pompidou, SFMOMA and MoMA in New York. We recorded this conversation live at Les Rencontres d'Arles, the photo festival that first mesmerized him decades ago, and where he studied photography himself before turning to research and curating.We talk about what a curator actually does, and why

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00:20:13

#11 - 6 business lessons from La Marmotte: 177km,...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2025/06/26

Last Sunday I rode La Marmotte, one of the toughest Gran Fondos in Europe: 177 kilometers, 5,500 meters of climbing, and four legendary mountains (the Glandon, the Télégraphe, the Galibier and the Alpe d'Huez, finishing on its famous 21 hairpin bends). My goal wasn't to race. It was to finish. And somewhere between Bourg-d'Oisans and that last hairpin bend, I found six business lessons I have to share with you.In this episode I take you along on that climb, not as a cycling story, but as

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00:54:05

#10 - Lucy Conticello (Director of Photography, M Le...

De Donkere Kamer (English) ·

2025/05/20

What does it actually take to chair the World Press Photo jury, the most watched photography award in the world? In this episode, I sit down in Paris with Lucy Conticello, Director of Photography for M, the weekend magazine of Le Monde, to find out. Lucy walks me through her unlikely path from studying archaeology in Rome to becoming one of the most respected photo editors in the industry, and why she never wanted to be a photographer herself. We talk about how M balances hard news with fashion and

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30 results

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