The first of these was the delightful Ellen Rogers.
In her own words Ellen is an all analogue fashion photographer. However she does work on more personal projects as well, again all with analogue photography. Her work is pretty unique on the market not only from her use of film but from the whole style she adopts in her photography. It's not likely to crop up on the pages of Vogue but you would probably catch some of her shots in Vice. I'll post a couple of examples for you to nosey at.
As you can see she has this really unique and beautiful style. I simply love her work. Funnily enough I did have the idea of trying to hand tint my own photographs for an experimental project at some point. Ellen doesn't hand tint in the way I'm thinking, with pens, but instead uses some very complicated processes of which she would tell us nothing about. She's very secretive like that. But when you have such a particular look to your work and need to ensure originality then you wouldn't go around telling everyone you meet how to recreate your work would you?
Now she doesn't solely work on fashion photography, I imagine like a lot of photographers who work commercially she takes commissions in order to fund the projects she's really interested in. Being interested in the Occult and generally strange things Ellen's more personal work has a deeper, mystical sense to it. It doesn't always completely differ to her fashion work but there are certain photographs of her that have a very strong, almost disturbed feel to them.
Not that I imagine she'll ever read this but I hope Ellen wouldn't mind me sharing this particular photograph and the accompanying history behind it with you.
If I remember rightly approximately a year ago Ellen's mother passed away which is naturally a very distressing and upsetting time for anyone. Following her mother's funeral Ellen wanted to capture on camera the flowers around her mother's grave but each time she visited she couldn't get her camera to work. Growing more and more distressed by the possibility of missing out on this photograph Ellen made the decision to take the flowers from her mother's grave home with her (she'd been previously told this wasn't allowed so she was technically stealing). She promptly arranged for a model and surrounded the girl with these dying flowers and began shooting. One of the resulting photographs is the one you see above. Now even without that story the photograph gives off a deathly but peaceful feel to it, like the young girl has passed away but has done so calmly and without fear. When you know the story behind the photograph you see just how personal an image it is and for Ellen it was a therapeutic process to finally capture these flowers and the emotions that undoubtedly come along with losing a parent. I think it makes for a beautiful and haunting photograph, it's definitely amongst my favourites of her work.
For the most part of the day Ellen talked us through some of her projects and gave us some advice for working in the fashion photography industry. Which may not quite be my chosen path but was good to know nonetheless. She was a great guest speaker and for the second half of the day she kindly gave her opinions on the work of my classmates who were brave enough to show it. I've taken some influence from her work and seeing her commitment to working entirely on film over digital has given me the confidence to continue with my own explorations with analogue photography.
I highly recommend that you check out her website, Ellen Rogers or even her Flickr. If you happen to have some spare cash then I'd say invest in her book, Abberant Necroplis, as it's a beautiful photography book to own. I may well treat myself to a copy as it's just gorgeous.
So there you have it, the wonderful Ellen Rogers. Check her out.
Laters,
P x
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