Upcoming interview with artist Allan Ellerby

I dis­cov­ered Allan Ellerby’s work while look­ing for images to accom­pany one of my pre­vi­ous posts. I’m pleased to say he has agreed to an inter­view that will be posted here later, but first, an intro­duc­tion is in order.

Abalone City, New York, 2009, Allan Ellerby

Ellerby was born in Hull, York­shire in Eng­land in 1952 and became inter­ested in pho­tog­ra­phy around the age of 19. By his own admo­ni­tion, most of his pho­to­graphic work had been rel­e­gated to hol­i­days and vaca­tions. It wasn’t until 2007 that Ellerby’s pho­tog­ra­phy became some­thing more than a hobby. Fol­low­ing a cathar­sis brought on by seri­ous ill­ness, Ellerby began to approach his work as a more mean­ing­ful and cre­ative occupation.

Ellerby cites sev­eral influ­en­tial pho­tog­ra­phers includ­ing Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, W. Eugene Smith, and Don­ald McCullin. The now defunct Cre­ative Cam­era mag­a­zine was where he was intro­duced to many of these mas­ters.  Another source of inspi­ra­tion for Ellerby has been not a per­son, but a place, New York City. “I find the vibrancy of New York quite intox­i­cat­ing,” he says. Trav­el­ing to the United States annu­ally for the last 17 years has given Ellerby a chance to both immerse him­self in that vibrancy and cap­ture it through his photography.

“I have dis­cov­ered that it is very impor­tant with pho­tog­ra­phy, as in life, to go my own way,” Ellerby says. As he con­tin­ues to define what that is for him­self, Ellerby con­tin­ues to learn and be inspired by other artists such as Robert Frank, Walker Evans, and Robert Capa. Ellerby says his pho­to­graphic inter­ests reside in the deep psy­chol­ogy of the human con­di­tion. I would sug­gest that this inter­est is most rep­re­sented in his urban recon­struc­tions and assemblages.

To date, Ellerby has not yet exhib­ited his work in pub­lic. I point this out merely to illus­trate the impor­tance and deeply per­sonal nature of his work, despite that none of it is por­trai­ture in nature (at least not in the lit­eral sense), and that not all great work finds imme­di­ate recog­ni­tion for its artis­tic suc­cess. I find Ellerby’s art to be quite suc­cess­ful, and there’s no doubt he does it for the joy and sat­is­fac­tion it pro­vides him. I look for­ward to learn­ing things in this inter­view and shar­ing them here.