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Ellie Davies
Ellie Davies (Born 1976) lives in Dorset and works in the woods and forests of Southern England. She gained her MA in Photography from London College of Communication.
Davies is represented by Crane Kalman Brighton Gallery in the UK, Dimmitt Contemporary Art in Houston Texas, Patricia Armocida Gallery in Milan, Susan Spiritus Gallery in California, Gilman Contemporary in Sun Valley Idaho, A.Galerie in Paris and Brucie Collections in Kyiv.
Charlotte Parkin
Head of Marketing & Sub Editor for On Landscape. Dabble in digital photography, open water swimmer, cooking buff & yogi.
Ellie's work has continued to inspire me with her projects, enthusiasm and creativity. Each project focuses on addressing human impacts on a specific environment, such as the New Forest in the South of England and on the plight of extremely rare and endangered UK chalk streams. Her body of work leaves the viewer with a call to action that these environments need preserving.
It was 2017 when we first interviewed you; that’s 7 years ago! What have you been working on since then? Were there any highlights or experiences that you’d like to share?
I can’t believe it’s been seven years! Since we last talked, I’ve made five bodies of work: Fires 2018, Seascapes 2020, Stillness 2021, Chalk Streams 2023, and the Seascapes Triptych 2013, which is ongoing.
During this time, the emphasis of my work has shifted because I felt it was impossible to make landscape photography without considering climate change. While I have continued to think about how we form our understanding of landscape from a constructionist point of view, these bodies of work also place climate change and its ramifications on specific ecosystems at the centre of my approach to image making.
For the Seascapes series overlaid light captured on the surface of water from the sea, rivers, lakes, flood zones and winterbournes onto woodlands and forests local to my home in Dorset in the south of England. I was interested in the flooding taking place across Britain and the impacts it was having on the landscapes local to me, and more widely the threats of climate change in the UK, with particular reference to forests and riparian environments.
More recently, the Chalk Streams and Seascapes Triptych have highlighted the plight of ecologically rare and threatened rivers and heathland ecosystems in the southern counties of Dorset and Hampshire
Particular highlights in my career during these 7 years have been seeing my work exhibited here and abroad. I loved working with Richard Kalman (director of Crane Kalman Brighton Gallery) on my recent solo show at Crane Kalman Gallery in London in July/August 2023. I was also thrilled to have a solo exhibition at Zingst Horizonte Photo Festival in Zingst on the Baltic Sea in Germany. The billboard sized images are being exhibited in a meadow by the seaside until June 2024.