Ellen Carey: Struck By Light

21 July 2023 - 11 February 2024

New Britain Museum of Art
56 Lexington Street
New Britain, CT 06052

Part One: On view in the Helen T. and Philip B. Stanley Gallery
Part Two: On view in the Maximilian E. and Marion O. Hoffman Foundation Gallery

Since the early 1990s, acclaimed Hartford-based artist Ellen Carey (b. 1952) has created experimental and abstract works that defy photographic conventions. Ellen Carey: Struck by Light represents the largest retrospective of Carey’s innovative photo-objects and lens-based artworks in a decade. Tracing 30 years of her prolific career, the exhibition includes examples of her Photography Degree Zero practice (1996–2023) of Polaroid 20 X 24 lens-based images—including Pulls and Rollbacks—as well as her Struck by Light series (1988–2023) of camera-less photograms—Dings and Shadows—which are inspired by the earliest examples of paper photography.

nbmaa.org

Artist Ellen Carey and Dunhill’s Mark Weston on Discovery, Originality and Creative Connection

October, 2021

An insight into two parallel creative processes, ahead of a new dunhill collection which reimagines Carey’s work.

Mark Weston has been Creative Director at dunhill since 2017, where – as he explains in this new video made in collaboration with Frieze – ‘quite loose conversations about ideas and principles and philosophies’ with his team led him to the work of American artist Ellen Carey.

Watch video on collaborative process:
Frieze.com

FRIEZE x dunhill
Cocktail Reception

14 October, 2021

Dunhill House
2 Davies Street
London

Join us for a cocktail drinks reception and screening of a new short film documenting the parallel practices of Mark Weston, Creative Director, dunhill & Ellen Carey, Photographic Artist.

More on the Dunhill x Ellen Carey collaboration here: Dunhill.com
SS22 Collection on YouTube

Dunhill Identities: Ellen Carey
Spring Summer 2022 Collaboration

In exclusive collaboration with dunhill for Spring Summer 2022, pieces of Carey’s existing catalogue are reimagined as bold prints that accent the new collection throughout.

The abstract work of photographic artist Ellen Carey features as a print collaboration this season. Most frequently appearing on double bonded duchesse satin, this most haute couture of fabrics takes the place of a technical shell in canoe tops, jackets and hats.

Carey’s prints also feature on leather goods, such as the new era Lock bag in a variety of forms for SS 2022.

More on the Dunhill x Ellen Carey collaboration here: Dunhill.com
SS22 Collection on YouTube

“I was first drawn to Ellen’s work in a very immediate, visual way. Through further research into her working process, i realized her methodical curiosity and experimentation connected very much with my own. I was fascinated by her inquisitive and almost mechanical experimentation, playing with the parameters of the development process. Process and its possibilities is an on-going fascination for me, and the importance of trusting instinct while embracing the accidentals. The painterly colours, patterns and textures that result in ellen’s work reminded me of similar textiles and treatments i work with. It just seemed logical to ask her to work with us at dunhill – and it is a great privilege that she agreed!”

Mark Weston, Creative Director

More on the Dunhill x Ellen Carey collaboration here: Dunhill.com
SS22 Collection on YouTube

The Polaroid Project:
At The Intersection of Art and Technology

13 June – 15 September, 2019

McCord Museum
690 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, QC
H3A 1E9

A unique opportunity to discover the extraordinary artistic and scientific creativity of Polaroid photography. At the intersection of art and technology, the exhibition presents the original works of some 100 of the most celebrated international artists of the 20th century along with the cameras they used.

The Polaroid, both an image and a wonderful tool, was invented by Edwin Land in 1947. It remains, despite the decline of the company, associated in the collective imagination with innovation, efficiency and leisure.

Explore the exhibition: McCord Museum

A Yellow Rose Project

A Yellow Rose Project is a photographic collaboration of responses, reflections, and reactions to the 19th Amendment from over one hundred women across the United States.

Over one hundred women across the United States were invited to join in a photographic collaboration, A Yellow Rose Project. These photographers were asked to make work in response, reflection, or reaction to the ratification of the 19th Amendment. From inception, the goal of this project was to provide a focal point and platform for image makers to share contemporary viewpoints as we approach the centennial of this event, to gain a deeper understanding of American history and culture, to build a bridge from the past to the present and future.

Explore the exhibition: ayellowroseproject.com

Hundred Heroines

We have a vision: the universal acknowledgement of photographic heroines past, present and future. Our Mission is to achieve this.

The Heroinic Hundred: The Hundred Heroines, women in photography from across the world whose work is transforming photography today. Selected in 2018 to mark the centenary of some British women voting in the general election.

Explore the exhibition: hunderedheroines.org

Read essay by Donna Fleischer: Rapture in Oneiric Blue

Out of the Box: Camera-less Photography

Now – 18 June, 2019

Norton Museum of Art
1450 S. Dixie Highway
West Palm Beach, FL

From the earliest days of photography, artists have experimented with ways to record images without the use of a conventional camera apparatus. One of the acknowledged founders of the medium, the British inventor William Henry Fox Talbot, was among the first to make camera-less pictures this way, calling them “photogenic drawings.” Starting with Talbot, then moving on to the surrealist “rayograms” of Man Ray and continuing with works by photographers including Robert Heinecken, Ellen Carey, Walead Beshty, and Adam Fuss, the exhibition illustrates the myriad ways in which the materials and techniques of photography can create meaning without a camera. Out of the Box will present 50 works in this tradition, primarily drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection of photography, most of which have never been shown publicly. The exhibition is curated by Tim B. Wride, William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of Photography.

Exhibition Website

RPS Presents: Ellen Carey
Photo London

Keynote Lectures:

17 May, 2019
4:00 - 4:50pm

PHOTO LONDON
Somerset House
Strand London

Details

20 May, 2019
6.30 - 8:00 PM

Royal Photographic Society
RPS House
Bristol

Details

"The UK Photography event of the year" – The Guardian

For the Royal Photographic Society’s lecture, Ellen Carey will  discuss her own work, from her student days to the present and, in so doing will contextualize photography as a visual art and game-changer in the forefront of the avant-garde.

Exhibition Website

Ellen Carey:
Women In Colour:
Group Exhibition

19 April – 08 July, 2019

Exposition Collective
Galerie Miranda
Paris

Based upon original research by artist and independent scholar Ellen Carey, the exhibition Women in Colour: Anna Atkins, Colour Photography and Those Struck by Light reexamines the role of women artists in colour photography. The group exhibition at Galerie Miranda  will present selected works from 15 major European and American artists from the 1950s until today. Confirmed participating artists include Claire Aho, Jo Bradford, Ellen Carey, Elinor Carucci, Meaghann Riepenhoff, Mariah Robertson, Sandy Skoglund.

Exhibition Website

Download Press Release

Ellen Carey: Crush & Pull
Paris Photo

8 – 11 November, 2018

Grand Palais
Paris

JHB Gallery is excited to debut for the first time a special solo exhibition featuring Ellen Carey’s new large-scale Polaroid Crush & Pull series, at Paris Photo, PRISMES Sector.

In this series, Carey combines both Polaroid and photogram using the Polaroid negative to create new abstract forms composed from chemistry-laden Polaroid pods and the light-tight color darkroom. “The great invention that is Pola-roid–the game changer in photography and science, technology and art–offers me a chance to combine innovation with imagination, echoing Polaroid’s tag line “See what develops,” says Carey.

Exhibition Website

Ellen Carey - Mirrors of chance, la photographie expérimentale

7 September, 2018 – 20 October, 2018

Galerie Miranda
21 rue du Château d’Eau, 75010
Paris

Galerie Miranda is pleased to present Ellen Carey: Mirrors of chance, la photographie expérimentale, solo exhibition by the American experimental photographer that highlights Carey’s investigation into minimalism and abstraction in photograms, under her darkroom practice Struck by Light (1992-2018).

Carey is highly regarded for her work that digs deeper into color’s mother lode in new and experimental ways. Color is subject and object, material with meaning, process within the art. This gives her work context vis-à-vis the field of color photography, a rich area in scholarship relatively “under-exposed” to borrow a photographic term. Photography and art, like music, are universal languages, as is color. Color is an artist’s universe and photographic color theory, RGBYMC, photography’s planet. Light is photography’s indexical and light is color; in nature, when light and color mix, we see a rainbow. (More)

Exhibition Website

Ellen Carey: Dings, Pulls and Shadows

20 January, 2018 – 22 July, 2018

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art (ACMAA)
3501 Camp Bowie Blvd.
Fort Worth, TX 76107

A Conversation with Ellen Carey: The Physics of Color
followed by a reception and book signing:
10 May, 2018
6PM

Since the 1990s, experimental photographer Ellen Carey has been making photographs that defy photographic conventions of depicting identifiable subjects. Instead, her works depict vibrant fields of color that are meditations on the very nature of photography as an image created by the action of light on a light-sensitive surface. The exhibition Ellen Carey: Dings, Pulls, and Shadows features seven key works that explore the artist’s interest in color, light, and the photographic process as the subject of her practice.

Amon Carter Museum Website

Polaroids: The Disappearing

13 December, 2017 – 5 January, 2018

Nathalie Karg Gallery
291 Grand Street
4th floor, 
New York, NY, 10002
 

Capturing the disappearing moment has always been a human obsession. Before the iPhone, there were Polaroids, a revolutionary technology that was the norm prior to the Instagram generation. 

Nathalie Karg Gallery is pleased to present this unusual and historically important visual promenade into the psyche of  the following artists: Matthew Antezzo, Michel Auder, Rita Barros, Robert Beck, Brigid Berlin, Emma Bee Bernstein, Brian Buckley, Tom Burr, Ellen Carey, John Coplans, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Jarrett Earnest, Barbara Ess, Saul Fletcher, Jim French, Joe Fyfe, David Goerk, Mark Grotjahn, Robert Heinecken, Dennis Hopper, Barbara Kasten, André Kertész, Jeremy Kost, Kevin Landers, Miranda Lichtenstein, Christopher Makos, Robert Mapplethorpe, Maripol, Wayne Maser, Amanda Means, Lucas Michael, Carlo Mollino, Mark Morrisroe, Sante d'Orazio, Poby, Breyer P-Orridge, Genesis P-Orridge, Matthew Porter, Lucas Samaras, Marco Schifano, Mario Schifano, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Mickalene Thomas, Conrad Ventur, Nat Ward, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, James Welling, David Yarritu.

Exhibition Website

J.P. Morgan Presents:
2017 Paris Photo Art Collection,
Photoplay: Lucid Objects

9 – 12 November, 2017

Paris Photo 2017
Grand Palais
Paris
 

J.P. Morgan is delighted to partner with Paris Photo for a seventh year, showcasing selected photographs from its JPMorgan Chase Art Collection at the fair.

This year’s exhibit, PHOTOPLAY: LUCID OBJECTS, highlights the many ways in which contemporary artists have challenged the traditional boundaries of photography. The collection, curated by Mark S. Roe, Head Curator of the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, provides an introduction to an important development in artistic practice today.

Uta Barth, Ellen Carey, Christopher Colville, Liz Deschenes, Gilbert & George, Lucia Hierro, John Houck, Annette Messager, Tony Oursler, Eileen Quinlan, Liz Rideal, Mariah Robertson, Donna Ruff, Paul Sharits, Doug & Mike Starn, Wolfgang Tillmans and Carrie Mae Weems.

Read More

Exhibition Website

Women In Colour

Group exhibition curated by Ellen Carey

19 August – 27 September, 2017

Rubber Factory
29c Ludlow Street
New York, NY  10002

Opening Reception  
19 August, 6 to 9 pm
 

Amanda Means | Carrie Mae Weems | Cindy Sherman | Ellen Carey | Elinor Carucci | Jan Groover | Liz Nielsen | Laurie Simmons | Patty Carroll | Meghann Riepenhoff | Marion Belanger | Moira McDonald | Penelope Umbrico | Susan Derges | Whitney Hubbs

RUBBER FACTORY is pleased to present a group exhibition titled, Women in Colour, curated by Ellen Carey. The exhibition provides a scholarly context highlighting women and color photography. Colour, the British English spelling, references color photography’s origins in England.

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Struck by Light: The Photograms of Ellen Carey

28 July – 4 October, 2017

Hostetler Gallery and Studios
42 Centre Street
Nantucket, MA

Opening Reception:
28 July, from 5 to 8 pm

Website

The Polaroid Project: At the Intersection of Art and Technology
Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Fort Worth, TX

3 June – 3 September, 2017

Amon Carter Museum of American Art
3501 Camp Bowie Boulevard
Fort Worth, TX 76107-2631

Website
 

The Polaroid Project surveys the innovative ways in which artists: Ansel Adams, Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, Ellen Carey, Robert Mapplethorpe, Marie Cosindas, Barbara Kasten, Dawoud Bey, Lucas Samaras, William Legman, John Reuter amongst others, expressed their imagination and creativity in Polaroid, with instant images using a variety of Polaroid cameras and films, exhibited with Dr. Edwin Land’s prototypes and archives from MIT.

This exhibition will travel to the following venues:

WestLicht Museum for Photography
Vienna, Austria
5 December - 4 March, 2018

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
Hamburg, Germany
16 March - 17 June, 2018

AIPAD: The Photography Show
2017
New York

30 March – 2 April, 2017

Pier 94
711 12th Avenue,
New York, NY 10019

Booth 404 (JHB Gallery)

Tickets and Information
 

Jayne H. Baum founded JHB Gallery in 1982 with a strong focus on contemporary art and inter-disciplinary practices, dedicated to contemporary photography and image making.

JHB Gallery Website

Ellen Carey:
Dings & Shadows

18 March – 22 April, 2017

M+B
612 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, California 90069

Website

Opening Reception
18 March, from 6 to 8 pm

For a map and directions, click here.

M+B is pleased to present Ellen Carey: Dings & Shadows, the artist’s second exhibition with the gallery. Carey’s new work investigates the very fundamentals of capturing color on paper through light. Creases and folds create a relief map of geometric shapes and ridges and work in combination with photographic color theory to create boldly hued abstract compositions. 

Indirect Representations
Curated by Joe Fig

16 March – 15 April, 2017

Cristin Tierney Gallery,
540 West 28th Street, 
New York, NY 10001

Website

Curator’s Talk with Joe Fig: 8 April, 2:00 pm
 

Cristin Tierney Gallery is pleased to present Indirect Representations, a group show exploring contemporary portraiture through the rhetorical conventions of synecdoche, metonymy, and metaphor. Curated by gallery artist Joe Fig, the exhibition includes works by Janet Biggs, Ellen Carey, Adam Cvijanovic, Joe Fig, Kate Gilmore, Neil Goldberg, Nina Katchadourian, Byron Kim, Ryan McGinness, Danica Phelps, and Tim Youd. 

FOG Design+Art Fair
2016
San Francisco

12 January – 15 January, 2017

Fort Mason Festival Pavillion
Booth 314 (Yossi Milo Gallery)
San Francisco, CA

Tickets and Information
 

The fourth annual edition of the FOG Design+Art Fair will take place January 12–15, 2017 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. The Preview Gala benefiting the newly transformed and widely heralded San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will be held on Wednesday, January 11, 2017. Celebrating today’s most significant creatives and leading contributors to the worlds of design and visual arts, the fair assembles 45 leading international galleries; prominent 20th-century and contemporary design dealers; a weekend of exciting programs; and 21POP, a special installation created by Stanlee Gatti.

Yossi Milo Gallery Website

CHANGED
The Altered Photograph

1 December, 2016 – 14 January, 2017

Ricco-Maresca
529 West 20th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, New York 10011

Website
 

Whether “intervened” or not, all photographic images seem to exist in the land of make-believe, and perhaps—despite art’s finest efforts—reality is not a thing to capture but to be created. “Changed,” hence reaches its conceptual apex with Ellen Carey’s subject-less “Pull with Mixed and Off-Set Pods” (color positive and negative prints, 2011): non-representational photographs made with a large format Polaroid 20 x 24 camera. 

Paris Photo 2016

10 November – 13 November, 2016

Grand Palais, Paris
Stand C27
 

M+B is pleased to announce its participation at Paris Photo 2016 from November 10 - 13 at the Grand Palais in Paris. Please come visit us at Stand C27 where we will be presenting works by Matthew Brandt, Ellen Carey and Matthew Porter.

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A Matter of Memory:
Photography as Object in the Digital Age

22 October – 29 January, 2017

Exhibition preview, 21 October

George Eastman Museum
900 East Avenue
Rochester, NY  14607
 

Today, the majority of photographic images are recorded digitally and viewed on screens rather than exposed on film and printed. Photographs in the form of image-bearing sheets of paper have become increasingly scarce outside of the art world. Because personal and collective memories are so inextricably intertwined with photographs—the result of the medium’s saturation of everyday life for the past 177 years—the change in the production and dissemination of photographic images is altering society’s relationship to memory.

Featuring work by more than thirty artists, A Matter of Memory: Photography as Object in the Digital Age encourages us to consider the future of memory. 

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n  e  w  f  l  e  s  h
An exhibit curated in conjunction with Dear Dave's 23rd issue

9 September – 23 September, 2016

Gallery Talk  
17 September, 4:00 PM

Gallery talk with Ellen Carey and Stephen Frailey, Director of SVA Photography Department and Editor of Dear Dave, Magazine.

Rubber Factory
29c Ludlow Street
New York, NY  10002
 

What does queer look like beyond the body?
Rubber Factory’s n e w f l e s h, curated by Efrem Zelony-Mindell, will expel most notions of conventional gender and identity studies as we hope to reclaim certain notions of what queer is. 

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big nothing

16 June – 19 August, 2016

Sous Les Etoiles Gallery
560 Broadway, Suite 603
New York, NY  10012
 

Sous Les Etoiles Gallery is pleased to present “big nothing,” a group show curated by British abstract photographer Richard Caldicott featuring the work of photographers Nina Brauhauser, Ellen Carey, Luuk de Haan, Karl Martin Holzhäuser, Gottfried Jäger and Erin O’ Keefe. The exhibition is the first US show since 1990 to feature the work of Holzhäuser alongside German compatriot Jäger, both longtime correspondents and collaborators, and the first-ever exhibition of Ellen Carey’s Zerogram series of photograms and paper negatives.

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2016 Aperture Summer Open
Photography Is Magic

14 July – 11 August, 2016

Aperture Foundation
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY  10001
 

Aperture’s 2016 Summer Open was a call for contributions to the idea of photography as a magical form. This optimistic premise attracted a diverse scope of magical contemporary approaches—from pictures found in the happenstance of everyday life to elaborate stagings of studio or desktop experiments.

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Chemistry: Explorations in Abstract Photography

21 May – 19 June, 2016

Garrison Art Center
23 Garrison's Landing
Garrison, NY  10524
 

Ellen Carey, Jill Enfield, Anne Arden McDonald, Amanda Means, Wendy Small and S. Gayle Stevens have spent many years experimenting with an astonishing number of photographic techniques. In this exhibition the common denominator is that the subject matter of the works is the process itself, unlike traditional photographic subject matter which is more narrative and/or documentary. Alternative methods developed by these artists over time allow them ways in which to create works that are strikingly varied and result in mysteries that are thought-provoking, asking the viewer to grapple with the question of what makes a photograph a photograph. 

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