Rosie Ellis is a First Year Photography student at ECA. Her latest project is about peoples reactions to moving from the South of England up to Edinburgh. We did a little interview with her a few weeks back and here it is.
Make sure you enlarge the images and read the text as it's just as important as the photos.
This project, called Seven Minor Adventures in A Hundred Words, is an portrayal of people who have moved from the South of England to the South of Scotland each on their own adventure. The project initially started out quite seriously, as I had recently made the move as well, I generally thought It was a dramatic change.. but as the interviews progressed the humor became apparent.
Obviously the text plays a huge part of the project, how are you planning to display the project in the end?
I’ve generated two outcomes for this project already, the first is framed prints and the second, a book which I made myself. The delicacy of the book is much more successful but I’m fascinated by the idea of developing this further, by photographing people who have moved to England from Scotland and having two coinciding exhibitions one in London, one in Edinburgh.
What are you thinking about for future projects?
This project has introduced me to staged portraiture, which is something I find very interesting.. being able to depict what goes into the frame to generate clues on the person your photographing.. It’s a bit like a screen shot from a detective program.. I really want to explore this further... working with people is the only way I like to work.
If I do go back to the South of England this summer, I’m going to try and pursue the next part of this project, I don’t think I’ll be satisfied until I do. I’ve also been documenting my whole life on a film camera, from last Christmas and yesterday I took all the films so far to get processed and I want to make a completely unedited book from these.
Who are you influenced by at the moment?
Thematically writers such as Enid Blyton and Arthur Ransome, the idea of well bred children jollying off on adventures whilst away from boarding school. More obviously the work of Martin Parr has had a strong influence on this project, especially the way he looks at British culture. Ever since I saw Jim Goldberg’s exhibition at The Photographers Gallery, his style of working has effected the kind of photographs I want to take. I really like the fact he describes himself as a “documentary Storyteller”, it’s very romantic. An exhibition by Jason Bell called “An Englishman in New York” helped provide the starting point for this project- I loved the idea-though not so much the photos.
You can see more of Rosie's work on her blog
