Nadja Ellinger’s Path of Pins

Nadja Ellinger is a visual artist interested in the oral tale as a way to explore new narratives offside the path. She was born in 1993 in a small medieval village in the middle of Germany. Spending most time in the forest and in books she fell in love with fairy tales, folklore and storytelling. After completing her bachelor’s degree in photography at the University of Applied Science in Munich, she studied for her MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London from 2018 to 2020.

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Path of Pins is a visual re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, revolving around adolescence and the fluidity of female representation in folklore.

In one of the earliest spoken versions of the fairytale, which later inspired Charles Perrault to write his ‘Petit Chaperon Rouge’, the wolf asks the unnamed heroine: “Which path will you take?”, to which she responds by choosing the path of pins, the careless and fleeting one – as opposed to the path of needles, the irreversible way of the wolf.

This decision of the pins reflect two interesting aspects: On a personal level, by refusing to follow the prescribed path, the heroine decides to stay a child and favours the state innumerable possibilities. Exploring what lies beyond, she leads us deep into the forest.

On an abstract level, this metaphor of pins and needles relates to how fairy tales are being treated: Like a butterfly collector, Perrault kills the living, ever-evolving oral tale, to present it to the reader in a pose he artificially forced upon it: He coerces the heroine into the corset of his ideologies. Compared to the early variants of the narrative, where the heroine tricks the wolf, Perrault reduces her to a naive girl guilty of her own violation.

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The fairy tale questions authorship: Every form of retelling or reenactment embeds former versions of it, repeats it, alters it, so it will never be original – no authorship can be claimed over it. The fairy tale gives birth to itself.

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Therefore I work with my friends, my family, my own body. It is a dreamlike state, where logic does not apply anymore and time works differently. The preconscious mind draws connections, develops a narrative I wasn’t aware of and finds analogies between this universe and reality, stitching these worlds together.

The tale develops, slowly, growing with each iteration, like a living creature.

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Nadja’s work was exhibited and published in the UK, US, Italy, Germany, and France. She worked on commissions by clients such as Vogue USA and NR Magazine and held her first solo show with her project “But a Mermaid has not Tears'' in Munich, Germany. In 2020 she was one of the finalists for Camera Work in Ravenna, Italy, and exhibited at Voies-Off in Arles, the Ginnel Foto Festival, and the ‘Other Identity’ Biennal in Genova, among others.

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Emily Ryalls Reframes the History of Women’s Health

Emily Ryalls, currently based in Wakefield, is a photographer concerned with using the camera as a means of visual storytelling. She received a BA from Nottingham Trent University and has exhibited across Europe in recent years. Award nominations include BJP's Ones to Watch (2019) and she has recently released a publication with Tide Press; Something Different Starts to Happen. Emily's work is focused on issues surrounding representation and gender disparity. Photographically, her work blurs the lines between a divided photographer/subject relationship, this is developed through an intersection of performance, photography and research informed collaborative image making.

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“These Ties That Continue to Bind focuses on a community of women, myself included, who are interlinked by our chronic health conditions and more importantly, years of misdiagnosis and mental health treatment. Though we all face different barriers as individuals, what connects us is the onset of our health problems as a reaction to a widely distributed vaccination and subjection to archaic claims of hysteria as women”.

“This project is an ongoing exploration of lived experience and very much about reclaiming our narrative, using the camera as an instrument for personal expression and representation. The project juggles healthcare stigmas, alongside the ‘hysterical woman’ ideology, which continues to haunt women’s healthcare today. Having grown to encompass more and more layers, it is hard to define this body of work as anything other than a visual diary. Bringing together a collection of photography, performance and documentation, visualising a geographically disjointed and often misrepresented group of females.

“The series has been ongoing since January 2019 and continues to span across different countries / cities, making connections with different young women. It began in Denmark, meeting and connecting with girls and their families in Copenhagen. Before progressing into England and Wales, the work took on a new purpose - what began as a visual exploration of my own disjointed community, soon became a cathartic release and means of expression for us all. I began to work with self-portraiture, experimenting with how the self-portrait can change the dynamic of photographer / subject relationship. The girls were never seen as my subjects, more as collaborators and we began to make photographs together. 

“Alone, I began by exploring my own experiences and how this linked to my cultural roots and locality of Yorkshire - in particular, the influence of Bronte's writings and my personal connection to their literature. My experiences in the medical system, where my mum and I had grown to be seen as one entity (like two warping and twisted trees – feeding each other’s hysterics), led me to begin collaborating with her. Performances such as The Yorkshire Moors have my mum’s presence, not physically pictured within the frame, but in concept and spirit. Together we drove up to the moors, hung the washing line and sifted through years of medical notes where she is only ever named as ‘The Mother’ – capital ‘T’, and I’m taunted with spoon theories and jars of marbles. 

“The photographs were born out of previously exploitive and voyeuristic exposure to photography. Now, they strive to far remove our narrative from any sensationalised ‘anti-vax’ connotations in relation to the HPV vaccine. It’s purely an honest exploration of lived experience and community. When I step into frame alongside the girls and women, I feel their muscles relax, I feel their breathing slow and I know this is how we should be working to represent ourselves. To be truly seen, away from a political spotlight, this visualisation needs to come from within.

@emryalls
www.emilyryalls.com

Hayleigh Longman on Something Lost, Something Familiar

Hayleigh Longman is a photographic artist who uses her practice to open up dialogues and collect stories tied to people and place. Working with portraiture, performance and play, her work explores the duality of human strength and fragility.

Something Lost, Something Familiar is the first volume of an ongoing project, in which Hayleigh Longman traces the edges of her relationship with her mother. The ebbs and flows of their relationship are connected with the tree in the back garden, which Longman’s mother routinely cuts back to stop it from blocking the sunlight. Longman relates this intervention with nature to a feeling of only being able to get so far with her mother, before getting lost again. With the garden as their stage, mother and daughter are enmeshed in acts of mirroring and concealment, working through the maintenance of roots and growing distance that pulls together, and apart, their bond.

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Interview by Phoebe Somerfield

PS: This piece of work is the first volume for 'Something Lost, Something Familiar'. Looking to the future, do you have thoughts about the next stage of the work following the relationship with your mother? 

HL: Through the process of making this work, it’s come to my attention that for me this project is always on-going, I struggle to vision its end as it’s centred around the existing relationship I have with my mum. Despite us both knowing one another well, I view relationship’s as transient connections, forever developing. 

When I try to sequence the work together it looks different because our relationship has changed since the last time I was making work with her. I started making the work two years ago so I feel like each year is a different stage, with the ends and beginnings sometimes blurring together. The first volume is where I felt I had enough work to edit something together and since that point. I am in the process of editing the next stage and thinking of ways to involve my mum in ways I haven’t done before, using small exchanges of asking her to take the pictures so the conversation about the work is shifting. 

PS: I love the tree in your back garden as a metaphor for the relationship you have with your mother, the cutting back to keep the sunlight from being blocked. How did you come to feel as if the tree symbolised the relationship you had with her?

HL: After finishing my degree, I moved back in with my mum which is where the tree and our relationship became my focus. Coming home and facing some personal hurdles with the shift in my family life after my parents separating made me view my individual relationships with my parents differently. My mum had moved as a result of this and in her new back garden was this huge tree, which the whole estate is built around. We are the only people who have a tree in our back garden and it bothers my mum a lot as it grows so big and blocks all the light. 

Every year or two my mother invests in getting the tree cut-back to allow sunlight into our space, it’s quite a big job and  I relate this intervention with nature to a feeling of only being able to get so far with my mother, before getting lost again. The tree is forever growing but then gets chopped back again.

With the garden as our stage, the majority of the work is made within the presence of the tree. It creates strong casts of shadows which flood the garden that are recognisable in a lot of the portraits. Acts of mirroring and concealment, working through the maintenance of roots and growing. Distance that pulls together, and apart. 

PS: Has the relationship with your mother changed during the lockdown periods? 

HL: I believe it has, yes. I moved back in with her during lockdown last year so that again shifted our relationship and made me begin to make new work with her. This time around we were blessed with time, so it’s been interesting to see how that has reflected in my work. I feel some of the newer work has been more of a collaboration with her which has been interesting to see. Also making images indoors with her for the first time, seeing how that feels without the garden as the main focus but I am unsure of where that’s going. It can often feel as if we’re on top of one another as we’ve never really spent this much time together so it’s been interesting to see how we have adapted to coexisting to one another. 

PS: Much of your work exists around thinking about your relationships and connections, is photography a way of processing and moving through these relationships or would you say it's more about documentation?

HL: It’s most definitely a way of processing and moving through the relationship. The ebbs and flows of the connection between a mother and a daughter I think is interesting. It will continue to develop as we both go through different changes in our independent lives and together in our relationship. 

www.hayleighlongman.com
@hayleighlongman

Chanel Irvine Captures the Simple Joys of Another English Summer

Chanel Irvine is a London based documentary photographer, her personal work reflects the tension between preservation and change. With an eye for moments she deems timeless, her observations consistently focus on scenes that are reminiscent of older, simpler times which persist despite the advancements that otherwise transform the world we live in. As a result, her photographs accentuate the ‘ordinary’ - reasserting its importance as a photographic subject and highlighting the beauty that can constantly be rediscovered in the everyday.

Her stories often focus on livelihoods, environments and communities that are susceptible to change based on emerging trends, development demands and the technological progressions that inevitably accompany today’s increasingly modern society. Aware of the multitude of sustainability issues they face, she is particularly interested in the people and organisations who are working to make a positive environmental and social impact in their communities.

Another English Summer explores the summer of 2020, when England was emerging from the first Covid-19 national lockdown. Chanel documented her own travels throughout England, from Kent to Devon, Cornwall to Shropshire, drawn to the quintessential and the nostalgic; traditions, joys and sights seemingly unafeccted by the global pandemic.

“The warmer, unseasonably pleasant weather during the early lockdown months granted people the ability to enjoy long walks and rediscover the simple joys of a picnic or time spent in one’s garden. Then, when travel restrictions eased, Brits recognised the true value of a ‘staycation’, and all matter of adventures they could have without stepping foot on an airplane”.

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Interview by Tom Skinner

TS: Before completing your MA in Photography, you studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the Australian National University, how has that education informed your approach to photography?  

CI: I studied PPE because I was, and still am, incredibly passionate about people and interested in the different issues they face and combat – across all levels of society. I wanted to have an informed and balanced understanding of the socio-political, economic and philosophical forces that drive them. My degree has made me a meticulous researcher, and I believe stories are always paramount to visuals. Because of this, I always work to ensure my photographs honestly reflect the experiences and history of the people and places I photograph. To date, the best way I have found to do this is to talk to those I meet and who feature in my images, so that I can do the scene justice by capturing a genuine, lived experience within the frame. Of course, it is near impossible for a photographer not to impose any of his or her own perspective, feelings or interpretation onto an image... we do compose the shot after all. Because of this, I am hoping to focus my work on fewer, longer-term projects; granting me the ability to conduct far more research and develop a more in-depth understanding and relationship with those I photograph. 

TS: Your work appears to draw on the rich history of documentary photography and riffs on the large format motifs pioneered by American colour photographers such as Joel Sternfeld and Alec Soth, where do you draw inspiration from?  

CI: I certainly look to the pioneers of documentary photography (their names too many to list here), predominantly because I have an intense fascination with all things timeless, or reminiscent of older, simpler times. I think my eyes have become trained to look for scenes that are reflective of what Shirley Baker or Tom Wood might have photographed... scenes of a time gone-by, which, nevertheless, persist in a country so deeply protective of tradition, custom and identity as England. The large-format images of Simon Roberts have certainly inspired my photography as well. If, however, there is one photographer whose work I look to with the most admiration (and the hope that I might one day be able to achieve something similar), it would be Sheron Rupp, and the images in her book ‘Taken From Memory.’  

TS: Another English Summer explores the time in England following the initial lockdown. With hindsight it feels a long time ago, and potentially a long time until the current lockdown ends. What were the conversations like with the people you met while making the project?  

CI: I couldn’t agree with you more; I doubt any of us imagined that we’d soon return to a lockdown more indefinite and concerning than the first. During that summer, however, the people I photographed were all so elated by the small and seemingly-luxurious joys the summer months afforded them. I encountered a widespread, collective sense of gratitude, and whilst people referred to the lockdown months, they were all focused on what the ongoing pandemic didn’t take away from them. I believe these lockdowns - by restricting what we can do and taking away the ability to host customers in your store or café, to go to a friend’s house for a cup of tea, or travel to visit one’s parents – has instilled within the majority of us a heightened awareness of what we can still do. And so, when those summer months and freedom of travel finally arrived, people were overjoyed by rediscovered possibilities, and less-focused on the otherwise-disheartening restrictions.  

TS: How has your view of the work you made during the summer changed, and what are your hopes for the future?  

CI: Of course, now it seems like only a fleeting moment in time, as we have since retreated into yet another indefinite and broadly-discouraging lockdown. Perhaps, had I been more realistic about the fact that the joys of the summer months (and not just those dependent on the sunny weather) would inevitably be taken away again – the roadtrips, the daytrips, the picnics and re-opened pubs – I might have focused my questions on how people felt about returning to lockdown again. However, like my subjects, I was too blissfully distracted by our newfound sense of freedom to even imagine losing it again. In saying this, I think the photos adequately represent how the nation jumped to its feet with enthusiasm and optimism when it was within reach, and I don’t doubt it will again – whenever we eventually conquer this persistent and devastating virus. I have since taken a break from photographing life during the pandemic, I think I need to take a step away from it – maybe just to help shift my own focus away from the virus – and I am currently planning potential projects that I might be able to commence when this is all over... 

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