Q: How did you start out take photos and when did you start to get noticed by the press and clients?
When I was 10 or 11 years old, I spent lots of time drawing and making websites to put my drawings online. I was also very interested in Japanese pop culture online. Things like internet oekaki, digital "dollz" pixel art, manga and anime (like Serial Experiments Lain, Tokyo Mew Mew, Sailormoon, Pita Ten...) I spent a lot of my time at this age looking at FRUiTS magazine and websites like deviantART, and eventually I discovered Blythe dolls, and the community on flickr.com that collected and photographed them. I bought my own Blythe dolls and photographed them in photo comics, building little set designs and making clothes to capture them in. Eventually this passion evolved into an interest in photographing my friends and models in the same way, which is how I started to take pictures. Dazed & Confused Magazine found my work and interviewed me and shortly after I started to receive a lot of press recognition from other magazines, and my passion turned into commissioned jobs. I was taking days off from school to do photo shoots, so when I reached university age I decided to do photography and art full time rather than study.
Q: What inspires you? Are there any recurring themes and concepts behind most of your work?
A: Each work deals with different ideas and topics, particularly when I work across other mediums than photography (eg. drawing, video, textiles, music, etc.) Initially, much of my work has been heavily involved with visually representing my experiences of being a teenage girl / young woman in Britain, specifically through the medium of photography. Essentially, it's about growing up, being a teenager, and the twenty-something-syndrome. Adolescence is a very confusing time because it is a limbo between being a child and adult, and it is a learning process of finding who you are. To a lot of teenagers that can be very surreal and it is easy to get lost on the way to finding yourself. It is even harder as a girl. I try to convey this in my pictures: the serendipity of youth and the feeling of making it up as you go along. Yet also a strange middle ground between the reality, vibrance and beauty of being young, juxtaposing with the darkness and confusion. My work is often a mix of real documented events in my life, and fantasy stories of characters in make believe worlds. I started taking photos at age twelve (so just before I turned into a teenager) and now at twenty years old, you could say that I have a visual record of my entire teen years from start to finish that covers both real experiences and the surreal unrealities that one feels in the confusion of their own mind at this time. I felt as a teenager that not only are real teenage girls unrepresented in (particularly fashion) photography but the documentation of it through a real young girl's eyes (rather than the viewpoint of a male adult - which is still dominant in the industry) was also uncommon. Which is why I have found such sanctuary in magazines like Rookie and Lula, and the movement of young feminist artists that are emerging thanks to the democracy of the internet.
But on a wider scale, something that have learned as I've grown up, and also through spending a lot of time with people much older than me — including my very close relationship with my parents — is that people don't ever really grow up. Your body is like a vestibule that will get older and function differently, like any vestibule or machine, but the person inside, although they may get more wise and mature, is still the same person inside. I think a lot of life is about trying to find out about your place in the world; how you connect with your surroundings and society (going back to what I mentioned earlier). And that's what my work has always dealt with — how you try to find your place in the world.
Something I constantly seek to show in my work is that feeling of seeing something for the very first time, even if it's a little bit familiar. It's about creating an immunity to familiarity, and trying to simulate that unique feeling of the beauty and magic of seeing something for the first time — even if that means naively misinterpreting that thing. I think it's about the search for the beauty in the banal.
Q: Who are your favourite photographers?
A: (I'm sure that I've accidentally missed some amazingly talented people out, but) I love the work of Ryan Mcginley, Venetia Scott, Vivian Maier, William Eggleston, Jeff Bark, Tim Walker, Paolo Roversi, Alex Prager, Cindy Sherman, Gregory Crewdson, Larry Clark, Lukasz Wierzbowski, Laura Makabresku, Ellen Rogers, Julia Hetta, Lina Scheynius. And also many of my friends like Olivia Bee, Erica Segovia, Lauren Poor, Hanayo, Arvida Bystrom, Marie Zucker, Mike and Claire, Lauren Withrow, Petra Collins and Francesca Jane Allen.
Q: And what about other visual artists?
Henry Darger, Yayoi Kusama, Miranda July, Marina Abramovic, Monica Canilao, Joan Miro, Salvador Dali, Eileen Agar, Dorothea Tanning, Max Ernst, Gerhard Richter, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Lee Krasner, Karel Appel, Maryan, Trisha Brown, Helena Almeida, Pipilotti Rist, Frida Kahlo, Abigail Portner, Charles Burns, Aya Takano, Yoshitomo Nara… and again, my friends like Ben Giles, Minna Gilligan, Mirren Kessling, Maria Ines Gul...
But I am most inspired by films - my favourite directors are Michel Gondry, Harmony Korine, Sofia Coppola, Miranda July, Wes Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, Terry Gilliam, John Waters, Spike Jonze, Věra Chytilová, Shane Meadows, (early) Tim Burton, Sergei Parajanov, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jan Svankmajer.
Q: You call yourself a multidisciplinary artist. What other mediums do you like to work in than photography?
I like moving image, illustration, set design, costume design, styling, music and writing. I also occasionally curate events, exhibitions and zines. I was very fortunate to have discovered my passion (ie. photography) very young, however I think that it is important not to assign yourself to one direction as an artist. This has no effect on my passion or dedication to photography, however from a young age I have always tried to explore all aspects of creativity.
Q: Do you sell prints of your work?
A: Yes, please email me for more information.
Q. Would you be interested in doing a talk at my university or event?
A: I would be happy to (dependent on my availability of course)! Just send me an email.
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ONLINE INTERVIEW RESOURCES
Want to know more about Eleanor? Please follow the links to recent interviews below, which are recommended resources for frequently asked questions and university project research. Thank you!
Explore Create Repeat (April 2014)
Huck Magazine (March 2014)*
Clash Magazine (March 2014)
Cooler Magazine (February 2014)
Huck Magazine (December 2013)**
Dazed Digital (December 2013) **
*on performance, music & curation
**on Twenty Thirteen zine/exhibition
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