Today we’d like to introduce you to Ellen Friedlander.
Hi Ellen, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I grew up in Utica, NY and come from three generations of Uticans. While I was very lucky to grow up with extended family all around me and surrounded by love, I knew that there was a bigger world out there that I wanted to be a part of. But, leaving Utica would have been a monumental task had I not been given the opportunity to attend Emma Willard, an all-girls boarding school in Troy, NY. Emma Willard was my bridge to a bigger world, lifelong friendships, and my first steps to becoming the artist I am today.
While my connection with art began as a young child, the pivotal moment in my photographic life came when my father gifted me my first camera – an Olympus OM2n while in High School. From that moment on, the camera became an extension of my body. My focus on photography led me to attend Ithaca College and study under my extraordinary photography professors (Monte Gerlach and Danny Guthrie), who are still in my life as colleagues.
After college, I moved around quite a bit and worked a myriad of photography-related jobs. But I would say that my life truly began to unfold when my then-husband’s job moved us to Hong Kong. As I was navigating this amazing new city and raising two children, I connected with a local Hong Kong photographer, and we started collaborating. I worked with him as a Rep, Stylist, and Studio Assistant for ten years.
In 2010, my children and I moved back to the US and landed in Southern California. And, in 2018 I moved to Los Angeles by myself where a sort of creative rebirth occurred for me. In LA I was able for the very first time to completely focus on my own career and making work. Since launching my children and taking the leap to LA, I am now living my dream of being a professional artist. I practice out of my home studio, working alongside my daughter and creative partner.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Absolutely not. But I strongly believe that all of the hardship and years of struggling are what give a raw, robust, and authentic backing to my art. There was a long stretch of years where challenging marital experiences created a great deal of stress and loneliness in my life. It was emotionally catatonic, and my photography was a means of salvation. When I would be overcome with emotion, I reached for my camera, which allowed me to release my state of being into the images. I look back at this body of work now, which is titled “Betrayal,” and I see a different person. When we make art that is so personal and raw, it is like an outer body experience. Through this process of facing the camera alone and in many cases naked, I discovered how to access my creative flow.
My move to Los Angeles was also a steep learning curve as I only knew one person living in the city. Before moving, I lived in Santa Ana and was trekking to the Los Angeles Center of Photography to take workshops and walk Hollywood Blvd to practice my street photography. I knew I wanted to be more a part of this vast community of artists and photographers, and changing my geographical location was the first step. Finding my community here took some time, and just as my art was starting to resonate in a gallery setting, the pandemic hit.
However, I would not necessarily describe this time as a struggle. The year of 2020 was one of the most prolific years of my creative life. And my community grew exponentially. I of course experienced the sadness, fear and loss during that year, but I found so much hope and inspiration from the artists I was able to connect with and learn alongside. I actually feel like one of the struggles of these last few years has been navigating the world reopening. How the landscape of art, how art is viewed, and images taken are consumed is so vastly different than the world before the lockdown.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Much of my artistic practice is to create very raw and self-expressive work. My goal with these works is to share my vulnerability in a way that allows others to feel brave enough to connect with their own emotions and experiences. I want my work to stir conversations that would otherwise not be had.
When describing the work I do, I would start by saying that I am primarily a lens-based artist. My style is fueled by curiosity and a commitment to multiple points of view: I am drawn to the street, landscape, documentary photography, and portraiture. I use a variety of lenses, including a pinhole lens, plus a variety of in-camera and post-processing techniques of layering, cutting, and reassembling, depending on the body of work.
While I am still relatively new to the art world, I am probably most known for my Extended Frame collection, which is a different take on traditional single-image street photography. In this collection, three to six Individual photographs – and the subjects within them – are placed in conversation to explore dichotomies of public vs. private, unity vs. isolation, the collective vs. the individual. I started this ongoing collection back in 2017, and I have to say the first one I ever created, “Birdmarket,” is probably the photograph I am most proud of. It was my ah-ha moment; the moment I really felt like I had successfully made a unique photograph that conveyed an important message.
With all that said, I am a very curious person, and I hope to continue creating art that is both unique to my voice and resonates far beyond my life.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I believe that having the courage to be an artist, in any shape or form, is to be a risk-taker. I adopt risk-taking into my daily practice as I love to experiment and push my creative boundaries. My newest endeavor has been using a digital pinhole lens to define my portrait style. Pinhole portraits are less about looking “perfect” and more about capturing one’s spirit. It was a risk to move away from the clarity and beauty of a traditional lens, but there is a romantic quality to pinhole portraits that creates a sort of timelessness. The resulting portraits reveal an authenticity unparalleled to my previous explorations.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ellenfriedlanderphotography.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emfphoto59/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellen.m.friedlander
Image Credits
©Ellen Friedlander
