How You’d Choose Your Colour Pallet

Featuring Ellen Stewart Words by Nastasia Khmelnitski

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Ellen Stewart is a London-based photographer. Ellen’s career started from learning the art of painting from her grandmother, a painter and a fashion designer. However, Ellen realized that for her to express her ideas, she needed a different medium, which led her to photography. “Photography opened my way of thinking: you are taking parts of the world into your ideas while physically interacting with people, objects, and environments to achieve this.” – Ellen says.

In this interview, we speak about the challenges of preserving developed aesthetics when working on commission projects. For Ellen, this has to do with the choice of working with film and finding the color and paper that represent her work best. One of the main themes which Ellen pursues to research is the control over one’s body and the female representation. Through constructed realism, a viewer is invited to reflect on the themes of femininity, control, and the perception of the body. Regaining ownership of one’s body is interconnected with an attempt to free oneself from the scrutinizing stare of society. 

‘It came from a place of self-doubt; I was really obsessed with painting throughout my life. My Nana used to be a fashion designer and is still an amazing painter, so I loved to spend a lot of time with her teaching me how to paint.’

My Story

Hi Ellen, how did 2023 start for you? Let’s go back to your decision to make a career as a photographer. Where did it stem from, and what were some other options you might have been considering, as I know you have a background in painting?

Hey, yes, it’s been a lovely start of the year, thank you.

I suppose, truthfully, it came from a place of self-doubt; I was really obsessed with painting throughout my life. My Nana used to be a fashion designer and is still an amazing painter, so I loved to spend a lot of time with her teaching me how to paint. Yet I think truly great painters are, to me at least, a beautiful mix of talent of your hand with the ideas you have — I always thought I lacked in this a more technical aspect of painting. It led me to find photography to express my ideas — when I first tried it in an art foundation. Photography opened my way of thinking: you are taking parts of the world into your ideas while physically interacting with people, objects, and environments to achieve this. I don’t think I considered pursuing anything else other than art without naively considering all the financial hardships of this type of career.

‘I feel very much at the beginning of working professionally as a photographer, so the commercial work I do is very much an extension of my own work.’

Personal and Commercial Projects

One of the most noticeable aspects of your work is the closeness between the personal and commercial work in the approach and result, which is usually very hard to achieve due to complex situations and relationships with clients in the commercial sphere. How do you make it possible, and what is your advice to create this closeness of perception?

I feel very much at the beginning of working professionally as a photographer, so the commercial work I do is very much an extension of my own work. I don’t see myself as an advertising photographer, so the work I tend to get commissioned is usually quite self-driven and collaborative rather than with an aim to sell something. It’s hard to advise anything on this relationship as how you work commercially is very much a personal choice connected to your practice, and as you said, it can be also dependent on financial and complex situations.

‘The black and white tone colours are a very instinctive choice. I like to think of it in a painterly way — how you’d choose your colour pallet that soon becomes your own.’

The Color

In most of your projects, recently, you've chosen a very distinct tone for the black and white images, which is repetitive and adds to the consistency of your visual language. Could you walk us through some of the decisions that have to do with the aesthetics you work with? 

The black and white tone colours are a very instinctive choice. I like to think of it in a painterly way — how you’d choose your colour pallet that soon becomes your own. When I first moved to London, I was determined to start printing myself, so I took more traditional wet darkroom workshops. I tried all different types of paper, and something just clicked when I printed on this certain paper. It really felt like my own. It combined my love of tones in my collection of old-found images mixed with this gloss of a new image coming through.

‘ I was shooting on a beach in the summer for the series, really trying to get these intrusive angles of my friend I was with, yet in a confident, unsexual way.’

Women’s Skirts

Some of the themes you discover and develop focus on women, summer, mundane situations, and parts of the bodies, which allows you to present a different and peculiar angle. As in cases when you're showing male characters through the open legs of a woman in a bathing suit on a beach or capturing the legs of a woman from below as if pushing the boundaries in a relationship with a character. What is the central theme or question you’re working to decipher: control, the character-photographer relation, or femininity through a different perspective? 

The image you reference is from a series I’ve been creating in the past year to regain this sense of bodily ownership, coming from a place of questioning control of my own body. Men through the legs of a woman image is a mix of a chance of everyday life with the constructed element of positioning. I was shooting on a beach in the summer for the series, really trying to get these intrusive angles of my friend I was with, yet in a confident, unsexual way. Men featured were already looking at us due to how I was photographing, so I started to shift focus and incorporate them with the female body, sometimes focusing on my friend’s crotch and others when they were looking straight into the lens, which created this friction I loved. It started to encapsulate my ideas for the series while combining the documentary/un-constructed part that my work needed. 

A Sneak Peek

What project/s are you currently working on, and what should we expect next in terms of themes you’re developing? 

I’m continuing my work about the relationship between home and everyday surroundings, which recently has much to do with the female ownership and control I mentioned earlier. I’m going to present some of these new images in a group exhibition in April, which is exciting — to present these ideas. I’m also working on some new images of objects collected from the Saturday market in my hometown, but this is very much a work in progress to still understand why and what I’m making.