Get To Know: Ellen Friedlander

When I first saw Ellen Friedlander’s “Extended Frame” photos, I decided to feature her work in this “Get To Know” series. She produces fine art and documentary photography from her home base in Los Angelos, using a variety of in-camera and post-processing techniques to produce a new viewpoint. She has exhibited widely, and is the Co-Director of Pasadena Photography Arts, which promotes diverse photography projects by established and emerging photographers worldwide.

We corresponded regarding permissions to show one of her images. She sent one with great back-story! Here are Ellen’s words:

“I moved to LA in the spring of 2018. I had just started to find a unique voice with the "Extended Frame" portfolio and was also using my camera to process a personal trauma to develop another body of work called, "Betrayal." I learned through the Los Angeles Center of Photography that Ibarionex Perello and Kristine Schomaker were going to be reviewing portfolios as part of Street Week. Ibarionex was the first photographer I met when I started coming to LA. A genuinely passionate photographer and lovely person, so I was eager to share my work with him and interested in meeting Kristine Schomaker who runs her own Art Marketing Service for Artists, along with the art magazine, Art and Cake and being an artist herself. I had a lovely conversation over my work with both of them. Several months later, I received an email from Kristine asking if I would like to participate in her collaboration "Percieve Me". She had reached out to over 50 artists of all different mediums to create work as they perceived her for a show that would launch at Cal State LA in January, 2020. This was in May of 2019 and we set up a date for the shoot on July 6th. I started to think about how I would photograph her. The day before she was to arrive at my home studio, I started to play with different ideas. I decided to try a multiple in-camera portrait of myself. Using the timer to test my idea, I created "Resurrection" and decided to use this method to capture Kristine the next day. As Kristine Schomaker stood in my bedroom naked, with northern light falling across her body, this triple in-camera photograph materialized. This photograph captures the complexity of Kristine’s experience in the female body. I will always be grateful to Kristine for inviting me to participate in her Exhibition: Perceive Me.”

Ellen Friedlander
Visual Artist
949.422.5117
Website | Facebook | Instagram
The Candid Frame | Artsy.netThe Contemporary Art Modern Project

Portrait of Kristine, ©Ellen Friedlander, used with permission