An award-winning multimedia artist, ex-fashion photographer, creative director, and art educator.
In the last two decades, Manor’s work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions internationally, including the Fine Art Photography Museum in Colorado, Lana Santorelli Gallery, and Michali Fine Art, and has been featured in Adorama TV, Double Exposure, Portfolio Magazine, The Jerusalem Post, Calcalist, Twill, and Artmosphere.
Manor’s work has received recognition in the form of grants and awards from institutions including the Ministry of Culture, Black & White Spider Awards, Prix de la Photographie, and Black & White Magazine. Holding fine art degrees from FIT and ESC in New York, Manor completed diploma studies in alternative photographic processes at the International Center of Photography and studied abstract painting at The Art Students League of New York. Manor is also a graduate of the postgraduate fine art program at BB Art Campus, a certified museum guide, and provides independent art consulting on select projects.
In addition to a revitalized studio practice—currently exploring etching and sculptural painting—Manor teaches painting, mixed media, and photography to high school art students. Training as a psychotherapist, Manor brings a trauma-informed perspective to teaching, grounded in transpersonal psychology and nonviolent communication.
Manor’s artworks are held in private and institutional collections, with collaborations spanning international galleries, local museums, and community-based organizations.
Manor uses photography as a boxing ring in which fantasy and its fulfillment can wrestle, between the vision and its materialistic expression.
From Waking Dreams Solo Show Press Release:
Ella’s imaginative and exuberant energy is cast throughout the works and paints an electrifying and stimulating sort of imagery. As a self-taught painter, Ella was trained to think and create freely without rules and restrictions.
With spontaneity evocative of action painting, Ella’s otherworldly energy collaborates to produce imagery with luminescent depth and contrasty yet harmonious movement.
The color palette for this body of work paints with dark moody colors, brightly saturated tones, neon vibrations, and mysterious textural backgrounds. Opaque subjects are juxtaposed with semi-transparent effects that look like layered film stills that are dually surging with momentum and movement.
Whirlwinds of zeal and dedication offer a solid and powerful body of work, full of thought-provoking visual and emotional referents.
Artist Statement
My work is driven by the exploration of identity, memory, and transformation, often through self-portraiture, photography, sculptural painting, and installation.
Photography and installation serve as arenas for a dynamic play between fantasy and reality. The camera is both a tool for performance and a space for transformation and introspection, opening an investigation into the tension between the external world and the internal landscape.
I use the body as both subject and vehicle for narrative, questioning how identity is shaped, performed, and reclaimed. Through masks, costumes, and symbolic objects, I confront the layered and often contradictory nature of self-representation. The act of taking self-portraits becomes a ritual—an ongoing process of exploring vulnerability, empowerment, and resistance to societal expectations.
My practice experiments with a wide range of photographic techniques, blending old and new processes to create images that oscillate between the real and the surreal, the familiar and the unfamiliar. In some works, the body is obscured, fragmented, or buried beneath objects, such as the anatomical hearts in the Untitled 1 (3D Printed Heart Pile) series. These forms convey both loss and renewal, evoking the tension between absence and presence.
The work reflects a dialogue with the history of photography and artists such as Kimiko Yoshida, Yasumasa Morimura, and Francesca Woodman. Through this conversation, I critically engage with themes of gender, identity, and the body, questioning how public and private selves are constructed and deconstructed.
The portraits are not simple representations but layered inquiries into the complexity of existence, the unresolved tension between fantasy and material reality, and the ways emotions are shaped and displayed. The essence of the work lies in the tension between the visible and the invisible, the real and the imagined, the intimate and the public—each image inviting reflection on the impermanence and fluidity of identity.
