ELLEN ROGERS
UK photographer Ellen Rogers’ haunted stills bond beauty with the unknown. An obsessive collector of vintage cameras, Rogers embraces the process of creative film development, producing astonishingly unique works. In a portfolio dominated by women, she proposes a slanted exploration of the female figure, investigating their potential to allure, captivate, and dismantle. Her frame is filled with subjects that possess a mysterious and deadly gaze, living in black and white images imbued with pastel-like darkroom experimentation. All the while, they exude a hushed certainty, aware of forthcoming doom. In our discussion, Ellen goes into her introduction to photography, Carl Jung, and why even she’s fallen victim to the media propagated fixation with physical perfection.
Open Lab: Any aspect of your life growing up push you towards photography? Ellen Rodgers: It was largely attributed to my father and his friends, they where photographers and I grew up with great reverence for the craft/trade of photography. I would help them when I was little and although I went off on tangents as I grew, I always kept photography as my root interest. I still practice techniques that I used to do when I was a little girl. OL: How often do you shoot? Is it part of your everyday? ER: I shoot a few times a month, I try not to do too much, I am a firm believer of quality over quantity and I hope to shoot less to concentrate more on the shoots I do. I want to make it a slower process and focus less on commercial editorials and more on laborious artistic endeavors. It is part of my every day to a degree. It is mostly planning and constant attention to production: it’s rather exhausting. I hope to make more films and shows. Of late I have come to the conclusion that if something is only beautiful it is worthless. It must, for me, have vested meaning and enlightenment in its message to be successful, otherwise it is purely a vanity project; I am tired of the spectacle, the fluff and the meaningless images. I admit fashion lends itself to that, and I love fashion, but there is a middle ground and I must find it.
OL: Why did you choose still photography as your avenue for expression?
ER: I’m perhaps institutionalized in that respect, it’s a form of communicating in emotions primarily, and I have become lazy in my performance. It’s rather like saying, Ellen why do you only speak English when you talk, because I am ignorant and my parents taught me only this. I have not ventured out, I should. I communicate in photography, as it is all I know. I am trying to change this; it is something I think about a lot.
OL: Your photos certainly have a great film look, any venture towards the digital realm?
ER: No, I’m tempted to leave that there, but this may be ruder and contraire than I usually am. No, because it doesn’t suit me. I see people wearing black lipstick and I think that looks great on them, but not on me, my personality rejects it somehow, like the idea that your thoughts and brain power alter your stance, your bmi, your frame. Your art is no different, it’s a skin you wear, like make up, or clothes, it is a manifesto for the things you like, your taste, your personality. Digital doesn’t suit me, but it looks great on other people.
OL: Did you attend school for photography?
ER: Yeah, I studied a degree in printmaking and a Masters in Photography. It was largely contextual and heavily laced in theorizing. I enjoyed it but I don’t think it’s a necessary commodity. I really think it’s a waste of time and money. If I had gone freelance five years earlier I might be in a better place with thousands of £s less debt hanging over my head.
OL: Did school help you develop your vision?
ER: No (laughs), it did however help to prime me for critics and how to deal with people’s options of your work that you might not necessarily agree with. I am, as a result, much more open to other’s interpretations of my work. It can be in that respect a great primer for what is to come in the art world, as chances are most others you run into have been indoctrinated with the same approach to art. Personally I wish it were something I had avoided all together.
OL: There’s something macabre yet benign about your work…fear without a sense of danger. What kind of world do you see your subjects existing in?
ER: I was doing a talk at London College of Fashion lately and I had to ask myself this question in order to describe what I was always trying to articulate in a visual way. I began to come back to something I was always drawn to and that was an essay by Georges Bataille called ‘The Cruel Practice of Art’, a heavy essay describing the use of art as a mediator for the viewer to see life on the same plane as death, a way of experiencing death without touching it. I began to see it as an escape route, one that exorcises demons I had. Bataille puts it rather more eloquently than I could. He connects the fact that art has always derived from religion to the idea that it still does (in the 40’s that is, when it was written). This is much like what Jung claims to be the case with the psyche in human beings. He also goes on to explain how curious it is that people should be repelled by death but they are lured in with art that shows a level of sacrifice as it puts us on a level plane with death whilst still living. I assume he meant that this satisfies something deep within us. But of course this isn’t true, as I have been optioned for so many things and later relieved to be too ‘dark’, which is the way of the world now. We suppress our curiosity in favor of subservience and the promise that we may live in a safe nanny state where art is tame and doesn’t raise questions. So when an artist is original they gleam like a beautiful flower growing out of shit.
OL: Why do you tend to focus on female subjects?
ER: They say a writer should write about what they know, and I do the same; women and their powers of seduction rightly or wrongly, fixate me. How the eroticism of such a character lies so close to deviation, how so many fantasies teeter on the edge of death and how a beautiful women can petrify those around them. I am in love with the idea of women, whatever their size or shape, providing they have the capacity to devastate, I will use them to convey my messages.
OL: Your work seems to draw from the earliest era of photography, what about this period instigates your aesthetic?
ER: I genuinely think that is unintentional, I am somewhat of a postmodernist to look at and to talk to; I am obsessed with technology and gadgetry and the combination of old and new. Not in a steam-punk way, more in the way of a futurist manifesto (laughs). I don’t honestly think I am wooed by Victoriana, or Edwardian aesthetics more spirituality and power.
OL: Where do you think you fit in with other contemporary photographers?
ER: I think there will be more of a defining role in a ‘look-back’ from the distant future but, I am, contrary to popular belief, not a fortune teller and cannot predict such positions if any at all. I also do not wish to fit in; I enjoy the aspect of being the square peg. This is why I moved out of London. Acceptance and conformity to me are a kind of death.
OL: Where would you like to see your work go in the future, both personally and professionally?
ER: I would like to do more shows/films/books based on my politics. I have a very distinct list of issues I wish to approach methodically and without mercy. A relentless and grueling year of dedicated work is to be the fruit of my pursuits this year. I wish for eyes to be opened and to lose any trace of meaningless beauty. So I will try to eradicate my guilt of making unattainable beauty, this is a standard that we’ve learned to live with. I hope to boycott those unintelligent and careless enough to follow the crowd mentality of pursuing a life of advertising, something I, so far, have also been party to.
Interview by
Daniel Taveras 
