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The Lady Gaga Of Photography A Portrait of Ella Manor - Preface Artists often look inside themselves in order to ignite the creative flame. The history of art and artists is replete with self portraits. Such personal images have been one of the tools that artists employ for various, often complex and private reasons. Recently, a young Israeli born, New York-based photographer, Ella Manor, came to the attention of the editors of Double Exposure. Her personal vision is often challenging as it seems to ask the viewer to suspend any preconceived sense of what is reality and to follow the photographer into a world that is sometimes dark, yet always visually and emotionally demanding. (Jerry Currier, Double Exposure Magazine) Press Release- Waking Dreams Manor’s imaginative and exuberant energy is cast throughout her work and paints an electrifying and stimulating imagery. As a self-taught painter, Manor has trained herself to think and create freely without rules and restrictions. With spontaneity evocative of action painting, Manor’s imaginative and digital manipulation collaborates to produce imagery full of movement that is balanced yet paradoxically asymmetrical. Communicating one’s dreams into words is rarely a faithful expression of the subconscious. Dreaming introduces a completely new plane of reality to our minds and trying to accurately recall unusual events or emotions is difficult to do. For most, it’s easier to close your eyes and visually replay the dream beneath your eyelids, rather than speak about them. Manor, on the contrary, has brilliantly communicated her imaginative awakenings in order to share a vibrant, haunting visual experience. (Bianca Russo, Michali Fine Art Gallery) Of Fashion Victims and Beautiful Monsters Like Man Ray, Dianne Arbus, and Richard Avedon, all of whom honed their unmistakably fine art visions at “Vogue”, Manor marries form and content with an élan that makes a mockery of distinctions between high and low. Her pictures intrigue one by investing what is sometimes considered superficial, even trivial, with a suggestiveness that speaks of fate, mortality and other issues more profound that one is accustomed to encountering in the precincts of the fabulously trendy. At the same time, lest one misinterprets her pictures, it is more important to be aware that Manor is creating Metaphors rather then being literal. Thus masks are a favorite motif, mingled in one personal picture with ghostly overlapping self portraits that seem to speculate wryly on how the artist’s penchant for role playing could possibly precipitate a genuine identity crisis. Gender is also up for grabs- or at least fluid- in some of Manor’s photographs, as seen in one image in her digital Fashion portfolio of a model with her luxuriant mane pinned back out of view on one side and a stubble drawn into her face, suggesting a more beautiful tongue-in-chic update on those half-man half-woman hoaxes in sleazy carnival sideshows. But perhaps the real showstopper of the site is a picture in which Manor, her lips dripping fake blood, hovers sinisterly over a nude model with fang-marks on her neck. At first glance, it could look like a spoof of Charles Busch’s off-Broadway camp classic “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.” Then it dawns on one that Ella Manor may be alluding to something deeper and more universal: how all artists draw their life’s blood from their models or muses. (Ed McCormack, Gallery & Studio MagazIne) Press Release- Look! The basic and timeless principle that separates extraordinary images and their impact on the individual from the merely average or mundane has always been the hand of the artist. Whether moving a brush, chisel, or applying pressure to a shutter button the artists are the ones who engage and seduce the hearts and minds of the viewer. Ella Manor emerges from the fashion world to explore the concepts of life and death, birth and rebirth, and the social situations that impact our day-to-day lives. Manor’s ability to unmask the realities behind the social stigmas and protocols that permeate society’s values and fears gives us an electrifying glimpse into what we are and the pretense of what we have become. These accomplishments alone would signify the emergence of a significant artist. Compounded with vulnerability, courage, tenacity and an almost manic determination for self evaluation, Manor strives to discover her own sense of desire and identity through her relationships with other people, dolls that appear beautifully fragile or are broken, and locations that generate a haunting sense of hope and beauty. (Bob Hogge, Director, Monkdogz Urban Art) |