S5, E11 Sukhy Hullait | Storytelling photographer

In this episode, we meet Sukhy Hullait - a multi award-winning storytelling photographer based in London, whose work captures the emotional texture of everyday life. Rooted in British social documentary, Sukhy’s images explore themes of home, identity, and inequality, often spotlighting marginalised voices and overlooked stories.

Sukhy’s thoughtful, immersive approach has earned him the Sony World Photography Award, two Portrait of Britain wins, and recognition in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize.

As an educator, Sukhy leads workshops across the UK, empowering others to find their visual voice through street portraiture and documentary photography.

Episode recorded on 12 August 2025

Discover more: sukhyhullait.com
Instagram: @sukhyhullait

Podcast details:
Podcast email: artiststalespodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.artiststales.net
Instagram: @artists_tales_podcast
Threads: @artists_tales_podcast

Transcript

Welcome to Artist Tales, the podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. I'm your host, Heather Martin, and in this episode we're joined by someone whose images speak quietly but powerfully, London-based storyteller and a award-winning photographer, Sukhy Hullait. Sukhy’s work finds poetry in everyday places, telling long form photo stories that illuminate home community identity and inequality rooted in the British social documentary tradition.

His images don't just document, they empathize. Whether he's focused on overlooked narratives or amplifying marginalized voices, Sukhy’s camera becomes a mirror to humanity's most tender truth. Entirely self-taught and colorblind. Suki brings a distinct sensitivity and style taste craft. His immersive approach captures the emotional textures of life.

One thoughtful frame at a time beyond the camera. Sukhy is a passionate teacher and workshop leader helping others to find their visual voice through street portraiture, storytelling, and socially engaged practice. Welcome Sukhy. We're an introduction. Heather, thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here.

I think I'm gonna clip that intro and send it to my family. Or you can send them the, uh, the podcast and of course, yes, they can listen to it. Yeah. But thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate that and I appreciate being here. I'm really honored. It's really great to have you as a guest. So I know I've done a, uh, an introduction and told the listener a little bit about you, but could you tell us a bit more about yourself and how you got into photography?

Uh, yeah, so basically I, let's start at the beginning. Okay. There's nowhere, like the beginning. So I grew up in the northwest of England to an Indian immigrant family. It wasn't particularly easy. There were a number of kind of family issues going on, and I ended up being a carer for several family members from a young age.

And that being a carer, it's, it's kind of made me, it shaped me in a lot of ways. It's, it means that I'm really organized. I'm really good under, under pressure and uh, it's actually helped me in jobs that I've had. I've always been the person who dealt with the tough things, but on the downside of really crave order and I like things being structured, so being an artist is kind of the opposite of being ordered and organized, and so it's something I'm kind of learning to embrace when I was young.

I, I was always drawing, and I remember drawing on the back of kind of till receipts and painting on cardboard. Uh, just any scraps that we had lying around. But my folks, my family didn't see much value in it. They wanted me to be something much more academic and important. I always loved art from just a, for as long as I can remember, and I always loved.

Like, I dunno if you know it, Heather, but in the UK we used to have something called Open University. Yeah. It's like, yes. For people who can't go to university full time, they do courses in their spare time. So these courses were shown on BBC two at Funny Hours. I used to remember just from a really young age, just really drinking in these art classes, um, these music classes, and it was kind of my introduction into this other world.

I always loved the idea of photography. But it was kind of something so alien to me. It'd be like somebody as a teenager saying to me, oh, do you think you'll go skiing in Aspen? And it was like, well, it was just never a possibility. And so photography was always out of reach, even though it was interested.

And it was only when I kind of got. A little bit older and I've had some friends who were really interested in it and one even gave me this Olympus film camera and that was it. That was the beginning. I was hooked. It just kind of forwarding a couple of years, I began working in design. Really awesome job for someone who's colorblind and I was working in this agency and one of the people who work there.

Had photography as part of his role. I took an interest. I was interested anyway in photography outside of work, and so I began assisting. I began doing all sorts of work in shoots. Then fast forward again and I was. At the, I ran an agency, a media marketing company, and photography was a part of the role, and that involved doing all sorts of things from corporate photography to, I even ended up photographing football matches as part of the role.

I was working there part-time, and that was because I needed to care for a family member for the rest of the time. But in those spaces in between, I could just pick up a camera and I was making pictures and. It feels like it was funny when I was trying to prepare for this podcast, Heather, I spent a bit of time just trying to think about, oh yeah, what was my story?

And I think there was kind of two real key moments a client had, was grateful for some work I did. And so he gave me a like. Wow. But not a particularly. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Which is wonderful, but not a really good one. It was a, it was, excuse me, a fairly one from Likers listening, but it was a terrible camera.

It was a digital kind of point and shoot, and the autofocus didn't work, and the pictures it took was stunning, but it just couldn't handle anything that was moving. I was invited to go to this event and it was like dancers and they were in and around the mayor's building. So I thought, okay, I'll take this new crappy ish camera with me.

I'll see what it can do. And on the bus ride there, I remember thinking just what a type of photo I wanted to make. I remember planning it and seeing it in my mind and then thinking, okay, I've got this camera. The auto focus doesn't work. How can I make this work? So, spent a bit of time thinking about it.

I got there. The pros who were there because the dancer was moving really quickly and the light was like just kept missing the shot. Even though they were using their top of the end gear and I had my little, you know, pointed shoot, not so good camera, and I completely got the photo I'd pre-visualize that taught me something.

It was really, it taught me that I could almost construct images. I could think about what I wanted to achieve and then try and work towards making it. And I think the second thing that I thought of. When I was planning for this or thinking about this podcast and trying to tell my story was it was the day I realized about making stories using photos.

There's, uh, quite a famous Mark Twain quote, and it's something like, there's two most important days in your life, the day that you're born and the day that you find out why. And when I picked up a camera and started making stories with it. That was it for me. There was nothing else I wanted to do, and I knew I could spend all day, every day doing this, and so I work quite hard to sort of rejig my life to kind of accommodate that.

So that's sort of what I do. Does that sort of answer what you were asking? I think so. And you know, it's, it's, I mean, your story is really quite incredible and really quite rich and Thanks, you know, I'm just listening to you. I'm just wondering, or I'm just thinking actually how much your personal life influences you, how you, you know, how you frame things, how you, you know, the, the types of, you know, images you see in your mind, but also, you know, as I touched in the introduction, some of the themes like home community, identity and equality.

So how much is that influenced by kind of bringing your life, your experiences? It's totally based on that, Heather. Yeah, absolutely. I've made work about carers, young carers, and essentially I wanted to tell my story, but I was too much of a scared cut to point the camera towards me. I've got better at that as the years have gone on, but there are so many common themes that come up just time after time with carers and.

This need for talking about community and country is very much about my personal history. I think before I was 20, I moved 11 times, so I always craved community. I always wanted somewhere that felt like home. And when I came to London and I was living in Peckham. At first, I wasn't crazy about it. It was quite a rough place.

But then I started working in the area and people were just so lovely to me and they supported me and they were really kind and I wanted to show that in photos and that's what I've been trying to do. So yeah, my personal life has a a big impact on my work. I remember a while ago you, when we were speaking, you mentioned you did some work with the Joseph Roundtree Foundation or JRF.

Yeah. Which does a lot of work around poverty and marginalization in the uk. Sure. So are you drawn to organizations like that to do work for them? Yeah. Yeah. I am. I am, because I've lived it. I've lived in, you know, basically without any money and struggled. I'm lucky where I've got to now. And so I want, I think it's important for me rather than just hide where I'm from.

To kind of be open about it and just to talk about it and to say we exist and we are not bad people. Often we're just victim of circumstances and we're not part of the lucky sperm club as I like to call it. Some people are born into these, you know, fortunate lives and I don't envy them, but equally there are people who aren't born into that, so.

Yeah, I'm drawn to it. And you know, I did mention, you know, you're interested in telling kind of long form photo stories. Is that part of the kind of telling your story or telling stories of people like you? Or people from a disadvantaged background, it's about saying, Hey, we exist. And so often in photography, it feels that other people have told other people's stories and the world's moved on from that.

As it quite rightly should, and there needs to be some level of people being enabled to, to kind of tell their stories and to have some kind of say in how they're represented. I think that's just, it's just really important. Um, for me, photography is just such a universal language. As a kid, I always loved poetry and to me, photography, music and poetry are almost like siblings.

They, they really influence how I make pictures and I just think it's such a powerful tool that if I showed a photo of you, Heather, in your laughing, and I showed somebody in. You know, ULA Batar over in Mongolia, they would completely understand what was going on in the photo. They'd understand the expression because they're human and this universal language, it can be used, I think, to kind of quietly make changes.

I really believe that. And you talk about kind of constructing or making photos. Yeah. Could you talk a bit more about that and what you mean? Yeah. What I mean by kind of constructing photos and making pictures is that I am primarily trying to think when I'm making a story, what is this story about? What is the subject matter?

And I used to work in a way where I'd almost work, where I plan everything out, everything would, you know, down to every detail. I do a sketch, like frames of this is what the first opening frame will look like, and so on and so on. And I remember hearing something by. The chap who wrote Game of Thrones, George or Martin?

Not that I've read or watched Game of Thrones, but he said that there's two types of creators. There's architects and there's gardeners. The architects are the ones who plan everything out. That's how I used to work. Where now I work almost like a gardener. I'll try lots of experiments. I'm almost like planting lots of seeds and trying different things.

And that evolves. And it evolves because I'm writing and I'm trying to think all the time, what is in service of the story? What do I want the viewer to feel? It's only by writing do I know what I actually think. I need to solidify my thoughts. Otherwise, they're kind of all over the place. So that's sort of what I mean by making constructing pictures.

It's not just snapping them gone, it's much more thought out. And in terms of your subject matter, is it predominantly people? Is it kind of the urban environment? So what, what sort of things are you drawn to? So I'm probably best known for portraiture and environmental portraiture, and I love doing it. I love.

Meeting people and talking to strangers and realizing they're just the same as me. We all have the same hopes, fears, dreams, we're all the same, and to me it's very life affirming. But my practice is much more than that. I photograph a lot kind of still life. I've been photographing flowers recently for a project.

I photograph a lot of kind of urban landscapes and I kind of do a whole mixture of things and all of it is just kind of different tools in order to be in service of telling a story. And in terms of telling that story, is it like, is it kind of into individual projects or is it kind of a continuum or is it a mix of both?

I try and keep things in project form, and I like having the projects to be a little bit different from each other because often I'll struggle with when I'm making things like anyone, and I'll have that just feeling lost and just thinking everything I'm doing is rubbish. You know? The fear that all of his creators get.

It's nice and really refreshing, having a completely different type of project to work on. And one always influences the other, but probably not, obviously. So there's a bit of work I'm doing at the moment, which is all about how. As living beings, we need the sun, but the sun can also be an oppressive force.

So that is completely different to the project, which I've been working on, gosh, for many, many, many years, documenting my local area. And it's kind of, it's nice for me to have that change. And how do you think they kind of influence each other? Because what you, the two projects you've described, yeah. On the surface of it are what you are telling.

You know, the me and the listeners Mm. Potentially is quite different, but I'm sure there are probably nuances in it. I mean, obviously we can't look at it because this is an audio podcast, but would you like to tell us a bit more how they could Sure. Potentially influence each other? Yeah, so research is a big part of my practice and I spend a long time.

Trying to explore and think and examine ideas. So say for example, the research for my project, all The Rage, which is about my local area of Peckman East Stillage. There was a time when I became really, really heavily influenced by Dutch painters, so I think it's an outdated term, but I think it was the Dutch Golden Age painters.

And what I was interested in is why are they these kind of complete top of the game renowned painters? Why are they documenting everyday people? What's that about? What, what was it about the world and the circumstances and the geopolitics and the financial incentives that led to that? So by following that thread, that led me to kind of a renowned art historian, and I had conversations with her and I had back and forth.

She was really generous with her time. Joanna Woodall, if you're listening, thank you. She just explained it all, and this research is something that I've learned how to do and then how to kind of engage with and talk with academics. So that has helped me, for example, in this Sun Project, the relationship.

Of living beings with the sun, where I've been contacting people who are experts in amphibians and lizards because they need sunlight in order to keep their blood warm. And so by having experience of speaking to academics on kind of a level, I found it then helpful to then contact academics from completely different fields.

So yeah, the things like that, they just help influence. Kind of both projects, you know, uh, um, make a lot of environmental portraits. And so when I'm photographing things, I remember photographing a car recently that was wrapped up in sheets, and I remember at the time just thinking, I'm gonna photograph this like it's a portrait and I'm gonna try and make the audience.

Feel something, feel what I felt when I was making the picture. And so, yeah, it, it rubs off in all sorts of ways. So, yeah. It really sounds interesting how these different threads influence each other. Yeah. Are there any other influences outside of that? What do you mean? It could be some of your research, it could be other people.

It could be other artists. So I always come back to poetry and music. Poetry has just been a lifelong love. I, I used to nick books from the school library kind. Teachers would lend me books and then they'd never get them back. Um. And then I ended up just shoplifting books of Bowery, uh, just 'cause I didn't have access to it.

I couldn't get a hold of them. And so words and poems have always been a big influence in every project I've worked on. Music too, particularly when I'm editing, I'm thinking about music and that helps me to get the, the cadence and the rhythm of the story. For example, the Young Carers Project, I was listening to a piece of music at the time and I'd listened to it before I went in to photograph this young, amazing girl, Sarah.

And it was a classical piece, Monteverde, and it just, I was listening to it then a lot when I was editing, but equally when I'd leave having photographed Sora. I'd always feel really adrenalized and sometimes quite even upset and a bit angry. And so I put on Charlie Mingus Haitian fight song, which is a really raucous, violent, rowdy piece of music, perfect for letting out a bit of steam.

And so I had both pieces of music alternating when I was editing. I think it kind of shows in the work, there's moments of kind of serenity and beauty and then these kind of quite stark raw moments. So yeah, mu words. I borrow lines from poems and lyrics from songs to become titles. I like to think. We are kind of wandering off the puff, but I just thought of it then, Heather.[

But I like to think that my audience is intelligent and I like to treat 'em as this. And so often there's space in my work and that space for the viewer. I want the viewer to not just be spoon fed everything. I want them to do some work too. There's one thing I think about quite a lot and when I'm teaching, I mention it quite a bit.

Are you familiar with Rah, the French painter, pointless Painter? A little bit, but not too familiar. Yeah, so Sara is like, he's had a massive influence on me and his work. If you look at it, it almost looks like grainy film. Photography and it's made up of lots of tiny dots. And I saw a study, a scientific study where scientists analyzed viewers brains as they were looking at RA's paintings and impressionist paintings.

Two things happened. One, the kind of problem solving area of the viewer's brain lit up. They saw something, but they weren't a hundred percent sure what it was. And so the viewer was having to do some work and they were thinking about how or what is this that I'm looking at? What is it? What does it mean to me?

What also happened, the second area of the brain that was activated was memory recall. Because it wasn't so clearly defined. People were pulling memories from their own lives and they were overlaying it onto the work. And that really stuck with me. And so often when I'm making work, I try and think about how can I make room for the viewer?

How can I make them work a little bit? It's kind of important to me to not treat my audience as dumb. This smart. And how has people's engagement been to your work? Yeah, I've had, I've been kind of amazed really just at some of the connections that I've had. I'm actually quite a shy person. I'm quite an introvert, but when I have a camera, I kind of turn into somebody else.

I have a superpower. And you know, God, a whole number of things pop to mind. There's, I was really lucky. I got a picture in the Sony Wealth photo a few years ago, and a guy had come to see it from, I think Australia, and he was in some set house and he saw the picture and he messaged me afterwards and he was like.

I was looking at your photo and it was like, it felt familiar. And then he looked, there was a bin in the photo as part of the scene and he was saying to me, then I saw the color of the bin and he was like, immediately I knew it was souk. 'cause different councils of different color bins. And he was like, immediately I knew it was Suffolk and then he looked a bit harder and it was a street that he used to walk down as a kid.

And he knew exactly where I made. The photo and just how that photo was almost like a proustian moment for him. He was brought back to his childhood and his memories and to me that was incredibly powerful. It, yeah, it was really amazing kind of to hear that. And often one of the most important things that I find is the people who are photograph and how it kind of affects them.

It's one lady I photograph, Gloria. She's kind of turned into one of my biggest fans. She just sends me messages in the dead of night going, you are really great. Just keep going, which is kind of amazing and she's so generous and kind and supportive and so stuff like that, it just blows me away. It sounds like you're really having an impact on, on other people.

I dunno. Maybe a few, but yeah, maybe a few. Well, hope hopefully more than a few. I just wanna touch on your colorblindness and how that affects kind of what you do in your photography. Yeah. Uh, always knew I was colorblind from a really young age and it's, it's never been a problem for me. It's never been a challenge.

I've always been quite open in a photographic setting of just saying, look. I'm colorblind here. And even when I've been on commercial shoots, everyone knows from the creative director to the people on the, um, in the studio, just everyone. And then we'll all end up working together. So the hair and makeup team and wardrobe, we'll all be working together.

And someone might be saying, oh, you know. The skin. Skin might be a little bit red though. Let's try and something else. And so what I've found, not that I've been on many other people's sets, but what I've found is that it, I think helped. When I'm working with other people to bring us together, and when I photograph people in the street, I'll ask them like, oh, what color is your front door?

Is that top? You're wearing the similar color? And so then the person I'm photographing, they feel like they're part of the creative process. They're coming up with ideas shouldn't just be down to me. Right. So it sounds like a really interactive experience then. Yeah, it should be. At its best, it should be interactive.

It should be kind of 90% talking, less than 10% making pictures. I'll often just make two pictures and that'll be it. So, yeah, I try and use the colorblindness as a way of getting people to just work together and getting people and photographing to work with me. Now, you've touched on the Sony, is it the Sony Awards or the Yeah.

Yeah. So you've touched on the Sony Awards, but you've also, you know, been a part of the Portrait of Britain and also the Taylor Westing. Yeah. Could you tell us a bit more about those two Portrait of Britain? I've been fortunate. Listen, I've just been fortunate. Generally, I've been, I've had more than a fair share of my slice of luck.

I know tons of photographers out there who are, you know, by far and away better than me and make better pictures than I do. I'm not just being, you know, fake humble, I genuinely mean that. There's some amazing photographers out there. The Portrait of Britain stuff. The first time was, uh, a lady called Beth, and I'd seen her around the area around East.

Still itch a lot, and it was always one of those where either I didn't have my camera or she was just getting on a bus, and so our paths didn't quite cross. She had this really interesting look she had. Really? Yeah. She, she, I knew there's certain people I know will photograph well and when people ask me, well, what is that quality?

It's hard to explain, but the best way I can put it is they have this kind of quiet intensity about them. That's what she had. And so fast forward like a year or so and. I was doing the local artist open house, and she knocked on my door asking to look at some pictures. So I opened the door. I was like, oh, it's you.

Can I make your picture today? And she was with a group of friends and they were like, oh, it's a birthday as well. It was a 30th birthday, and so we ended up just going in the street outside my house. I made this picture of her. I got a print and it, I was just lucky that that picture then got picked up by Portrait of Britain.

And the second time in Portrait of Britain, it was some work that I did. You mentioned Joseph Ry Foundation. It was a really amazing lady, and my brain's gone blank at the moment on her name. It'll come to me and Dawn, and she works in the local food bank here, and we've got one of the largest food banks in South London here.

In supposedly quite an affluent area, and she's worked there since it's, you know, many, many years, I think, since the beginning. And she's just an incredible human being. She's just really warm and friendly and welcomes people, and so I wanted to photograph her as part of the work with the Joseph Roundtree Foundation.

So yeah, that was the second photo. You mentioned Taylor Sing. So that was the photo I made of that lady, Gloria, who's kind of become my biggest fan, who sends me all these lovely messages. And she told me a story, uh, I'll try not to cry at the moment, but she told me a story about her dad used to work in one of the embassies in Trafalgar Square, and she'd always loved art.

And so after her dad had finished work, he'd go to the pub. And you'd send the kids into the galleries, so the national, but Gloria always loved the National Portrait Gallery, and so to have her picture in there really meant something to her. To her, it felt like she'd been seen. And the gallery were just amazing and they helped me get tickets for all her girls, her children, to go with her, and she dressed up to the nines.

They sent me, the kids sent me videos of her and she was just hanging around her picture, dragging people towards it, telling the story of how I'd made the picture. And she got, she would just talk to anyone and then people were asking her to sign the book that was with the exhibition, and she was just in her element.

And she sent me a message later on that day and uh, she said it sort of helped change her life. That's so, yeah, that really, you know, uh, I don't know if pet impactful is the word. Yeah. You know, is a proper word, but it has such impact and it sounds like she's had an impact on you and you had an impact on her as well.

Yeah, she's wonderful. I really write her, um, and I'll send her this podcast and she'll be thrilled to be talked about on a podcast. Of course. Yeah. No, she sounds like a, just a, an absolute gem. She's a force of nature. Yeah. So my last question is what's next? Where do you think here you're going in terms of your photography?

Photography? I've got no idea. And that's part of the fun. It's nice not knowing. So Heather, I've got no idea. I dunno what I'll be doing a month from now, nevermind next year. I don't plan things out that way. It's just, I love the, I've heard this attributed to, uh, two different people and they said create is often like driving.

In the dead of night in deep fog with the headlights on, and you can only see as far as your headlights. And that's how I try and take comfort. I only know what I'm gonna do like tomorrow. I don't really know much beyond that. But in terms of future, one of the things I absolutely am determined to do is I'm lucky.

I got into photography, I fell into it. Photography found me. And I get emails from young people all the time and they'll ask me, how can I do what you do? And I've got no blooming answers for 'em. I can't answer it because unless you come from some kind of family wealth and you've got connections in the industry, it's, it's really difficult.

It's really, really difficult. And that's even trying to just stop working on projects. Often people don't even know how to make projects. I made loads of mistakes just by trial and error. That's how I learned. I didn't have the option of going to university and training again, so I didn't have that. And a lot of the people from my sort of background.

They don't have the opportunity to go to university and spend three years and you know, the best part of 30,000 pounds on this university education, and then still not really know, well, what's next? How do I make it work? And so that has been troubling me more and more over the years. And so I spent.

Around three years making an online course, trying to teach people how to do what I do haven't held anything back. I've tried to just say, this is it your one stop shop and I want to help a thousand people. I want to train a thousand people. From underprivileged backgrounds, people whose voices aren't commonly heard in photography, I want to give them this course and you won't believe, Heather, how hard that has been to try and do.

I've approached so many charities, organizations in the UK and it's been really bloody hard, sorry, really hard. Organizations in the US are way more open to it. It's just so disappointing that I can't help people in this. Country. I just need charities to help me cover my costs. That's all I want to do.

Just the basics of keeping the lights on, servicing the website. That's it. So that's what I want to do. That's really important. And it sounds like a really positive endeavor. 'cause you're right, there's so many industries including photography where. You know, unless you come from a more privileged background or have access to, yeah.

Means to go to university or some of these avenues to get into the industry, it is incredibly difficult to break through and get into these industries. And it's great that you're a role model of, actually I found a different, I know it's, there's weight to that, but it is, you know, there is, there is that you are a role model and it.

You know, takes one, and then potentially inspiring other people too. So, but I really wanna thank you for being a guest on, on this podcast. It's, it's been really wonderful speaking with you. Thanks, Heather. Appreciate you being here. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for tuning into my conversation with Suki.

I hope he found inspiration in his powerful approach to storytelling through photography. Capturing truth, emotion on the quiet strength of everyday lives. If this episode resonated with you, don't forget to check out Suzuki's website and social media presence. Links are in the show notes, and if you're enjoying artist Tales, help us grow by sharing it with your friends, fellow creatives, or anyone who finds meaning in the stories behind art.

In the next episode, I'll be joined by Libra Levi Bridgeman, a non-binary writer, educator, and lecturer who works in Theater, radio, and Queer publishing from co-founding Hot Pencil Press to creating verbatim theater texts like the Butch Monologues, Libro’s voice is bold, lyrical, and deeply rooted in the lived experience.

It's a conversation you don't want to miss.