Portraiture and Representation offers images from a number of photographers unified in their participation in Ello, which was founded by a collection of artists and designers in 2013 as a publishing and collaboration platform to connect and support a global community of artists.
In the words of Ello founder Todd Berger:
“We’re committed to advancing the intersection of art, creative opportunity, and new media to inspire what only the Internet has made possible. Ello exists to serve contemporary creators. Those brave, passionate, and committed people working at the present edge, realizing their creative potential. As a community and larger network of creative, Ello is particularly dedicated to supporting exploratory, identity-driven photography. We believe the photographic documentation of our collective and ever-changing notions of identity to be of the utmost cultural and social significance as we rapidly advance our world. In creating a destination accessible to all, virtually free of digital publishing constraints, we provide a home for individual identity to be explored, expressed, and carefully considered.
How to View Portraiture and Representation
During the day, Portraiture and Representation can be viewed on monitors inside the ICP Museum and during evening hours, images are literally “projected” onto the windows of the ICP Museum; they can be viewed from the sidewalk outside the Museum and are most visible after sunset. Learn more about Projected.
About the Artists
Ana Hell is a Spanish photographer with a background in illustration. Her photographs reveal her passion for absurd and surreal situations that sometimes go unnoticed in everyday life. She molds and plays with bodies as if they were her drawings and her camera is just a quicker way to draw.
Adeib El Masri is an Arab-American photographer based out of Arizona and raised in the Middle East. His work focuses on spontaneous moments, vintage styling, and simple, striking colors to create impactful images. He has been fortunate to see the intersection of many cultures, and hopes to be able to highlight the unique nuances of other cultures through his photography.
Stefan Serbanescu was born in 1989, in Iași, Romania and is a self-taught artist. He’s always been drawn to art, and especially to painting, but as his art grew more abstract he started to experiment more, which led him to photography, which has been his main medium for the last year.
Born of an Italian father and French mother, Jade Cervetti has been exploring the world since a young age. Studying at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, Cervetti directs her researches and visual practices on the human being’s simplicity and diversity.
Bastiaan Woudt (NL, 1987) has seen a meteoric rises within the world of contemporary photography. After starting his own photography practice from scratch a mere five years ago, with no experience or formal training, he has developed into a photographer with his own distinct signature style—abstract yet sharp, with a strong focus on detail. As a student of the history of photography through devouring photobooks and visiting museums and fairs, Woudt has a strong preference for classic subjects, such as portraits and nudes, and we see references to illustrious periods from photography throughout his work, such as Surrealism and the documentary photography of the 1960s and 70s. But through a sophisticated use of both camera and post-production techniques, which he has taught himself by heavily experimenting with both, he gives his own graphic and wholly contemporary twist to the classical. Woudt is represented by The Kahmann Gallery (Amsterdam) and Jackson Fine Art (Atlanta).
At 24-years-old, Johannesburg-based photographer, Aart Verrips has captured the attention of the South African fashion scene, while making a global and digital impact. Verrips continues to gain recognition for a distinctive style that merges the daring, provocative and risqué, while maintaining a commercial aesthetic, expansive creativity and attention to detail that hint at his earlier studies as a pastry chef in France. The self-taught photographer is credited with having “an incredible eye for the human form,” which is present in his noted collaboration with celebrated designer Rich Mnisi on his SS17 menswear collection, which was published in Vogue Italia. It pulses through Verrips’ work with South Africa’s new fashion avant-garde, including Matte Nolim, Nao Serati and Thebe Magugu, who trusted Verrips with realizing their creative vision. Additionally, his collaborations with stylist Bee Diamondhead have captivated the local industry, with their multiple projects being widely shared on digital platforms and recognized for their striking, distinctive imagery.
Mark Igbinadolor (b. 1994, London, England) is an artist whose work interrogates the relation between our bodies and our spaces. His practice aims to stretch his own perceptions of blackness to find the queer margins that dictate what comprises the identity. In doing so, he aims to pressure an audience’s passivity in ideologies of black expressionism as it relates to feminine and masculine energies. His work is forthcoming in an exhibition at the Hamilton Landmark Galleries as part of En Foco’s Annual Fellowship Exhibition.
Elodie Milan was born in Nice and is currently studying art history at Mirail University in Toulouse. She takes portraist of her friends or people she met on Instagram, which inspire her culture work. Milan loves people with a different kind of thinking and being in society.
Dustin Thierry (b.1985) Willemstad, Curaçao, lives and works in Amsterdam. The issues Thierry addresses in his photos are often as personal as they are social: he is fascinated by what drives people. As opinions and pictures fly around the world, he tries to capture moments of stillness for reflection.
Rodrigo Braga (Maltchique) is constantly exploring new mediums of creativity while actively monitoring and contributing to the always-changing norms of expression and media. Visually, his unique creative vision is often marked by the contrast between imaginary worlds and reality: organic colors and eccentric elements beautify unheard of perspectives; visions are realizes in sleek and futuristic forms.
Anjola Owonibi is a 19-year-old photographer from Nigeria and believes in creating art and improving on the culture around him.
Kelvin Konadu is a 24 year-old Ghanaian/Belgian photographer born in Belgium. He started doing photography at the age of 19. In 2015, he decided to pursue his photography education in high school at ESA Saint-Luc Liege. Entering in this school, his perception of photography changed in a rather extraordinary way and his love for photography has grown more then ever. His work is focused on human portrait with dynamic atmosphere and bright colors. Often inspired by historical reference, biblical, culture, or his fascination with Greek mythological painting, he tries to deliver a message by giving a little story to his work without forgetting to talk about our current society.
Photographer Arielle Bobb-Willis has been using the camera for nearly a decade as a tool of empowerment. Battling with depression from an early age, Bobb-Willis found solace behind the lens and has developed a visual language that speaks to the complexities of life: the beautiful, the strange, belonging, isolation, and connection. Inspired by masters like Jacob Lawrence and Benny Andrews, Bobb-Willis applies a “painterly” touch to her photography by documenting people in compromising and disjointed positions as way to highlight these complexities. Toting the line between fashion and contemporary art, her use of bright vivid colors is therapeutic and speaks to a desire to claim power and joy in moments of sadness, confusion or confinement. Her photographs are all captured in urban and rural cities, from the south to north, east to west. Bobb-Willis travels throughout the US as a way of finding “home” in any grassy knoll, or city sidewalk, reminding us to stay connected and grounded during life’s transitional moments.