El Plus En: Ellerker Gardens
Image © Luke Norman & Nik Adam.
El Plus En’s latest project is an unsettling trip into the subconscious and an unusual take on the photographic series
Author: Diane Smyth
It’s 18 months since El Plus En (Luke Norman and Nik Adam) featured on these pages, shortly after graduating from the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) in Farnham. In that time, the duo have travelled to India and the US to create projects, been taken up by a Swedish gallery, and had work published in Foam, Source and Wallpaper* magazines. And that’s just for starters; they also founded the Wandering Bears collective with fellow photographer Peter Haynes, curating exhibitions for Margate Photo Festival and Brighton Photo Fringe’s Open 11.
Now they’ve produced a new series, Ellerker Gardens [above], the first project they’ve shot entirely digitally. “It was a long process for us to get used to,” says Norman. “Initially we would look at every image immediately unsatisfied, an experience we were new to as normally we’ve had to wait for development periods before we could reflect on the images.”
They shot the project in two makeshift sets, one put together in Adam’s father’s house while he was on holiday, the other at UCA, where they had a residency. They used makeshift spaces, which meant they had to think creatively, they say, and the project took an imaginative turn, combining portraits and still lifes, colour and monochrome shots to represent the subconscious. Initially planning to pair the stills lifes alongside the portraits, they later decided this format was too rigid and opted to let each image stand on its own, an unconventional approach that nevertheless went down well when they presented the project as a slideshow at the Arts Forum.
“We wanted to focus on the ‘in-between’, the volatile state of mind in which instability manifests itself, where an uncertain state of mind can produce dark and bizarre outcomes,” says Norman. “The idea is all about letting go; you have to fall out of reality to engage with the pictures – the pictures are there to trigger thoughts inside your head,” adds Adam. “I think the best way to view this work would be to spend an evening with it. It’s a very tricky project to explain because, essentially, we were looking into our own thoughts and what occurs in our own minds. But hopefully the essence of the picture is captured, and therefore a viewer can translate that to their own thoughts and interpretations.”
Visit http://www.elplusen.co.uk/.
Image © Luke Norman & Nik Adam.
Image © Luke Norman & Nik Adam.
Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/project/2127272/el-plus-en-ellerker-gardens#ixzz1yKNAPYEN
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