English vernacular calls it a deer-in-headlights. It’s a term sometimes given to the look a person has when they’re plagued by anxiety, shock or fear. That’s what you’d get if you point a camera at someone unknowingly. But photographer Ellen von Unwerth doesn’t do that. She’s turning 70 this year, and in 1989, her photographic work started to bear fruit. Where Annie Leibovitz doesn’t believe in making a subject feel at ease, Ellen channels the person’s calm and excitement into photos that have a deer-in-headlights look. It’s a dichotomy that no one else has done quite like her — and is currently being celebrated at the Staley-Wise Gallery.
All images by Ellen von Unwerth and used with permission from the Staley-Wise Gallery. You can follow her on Instagram @ellenvonunwerth. To find out more about the exhibit, which runs until May 11th, 2024, please visit this link.
This is the 5th time that Ellen’s work is being showcased in a solo exhibit and it includes photographs that haven’t been seen before. The images are all in line with Ellen’s ideals that take the ideas of her German homeland and add quite a contrast to it. Quite frankly, Ellen is a dreamer who sets about finding the right ingredients for her witches brew. Her base is a bit of sex-appeal, contrasting colors in conventional places, and the souls and bodies of the heroes of her images. Ellen’s use of flash is synonamous to a magician’s poof-effect after saying the words abra-cadabra. And just like that, magic is made.
The Provocateur is Ellen von Unwerth’s fifth solo exhibition at Staley-Wise Gallery. The photographs included in this exhibition, several of which have never been seen before, reflect a liberated and irrepressible engagement with her subjects that the photographer has championed for her entire career. Von Unwerth notes “I know what it’s like when you feel really uncomfortable, so I do everything in my power to make them feel at ease – and to live and laugh and move.” These exhibition images reflect a winking provocateur; not so much the object of lust but the playful instigator – both innocent and naughty. While eroticism is in the forefront of many of these images, fantasy and humor unite von Unwerth’s vision of her subjects simply having fun – with each other, and with the viewer who they tease, taunt, and provoke.
Staley-Wise Gallery
Ellen’s use of flash teeter totters between the look of a forensic crime scene and the lighting you find only in night life spots that are considered taboo by mainstream western culture. It brings burlesque venues, brothels, and urbex sites into the spotlight so to speak. But at the same time, it makes you turn a blind eye to the taboo and bedazzles you with flash.
Now, more than ever, Ellen’s work is so insanely important. Most photographers these days pull inspiration from other visual mediums and apply an ethos of looking, but not seeing. Ellen’s photographs are rare — she has a creative vision and dances with the heroes of her images to wow us with something no human can see on a camera’s screen before pressing the shutter. By all means, she’s imaginative and delves deep into her fantasy world to give character traits to people that we wouldn’t normally see in them otherwise. I’ve never seen David Bowie photographed in just the same way that Ellen has.
If you’re in NYC or taking a visit, Ellen’s work is incredibly important to your understanding of the idea of looking vs seeing and creating vs capturing. Check it out at Staley-Wise.
