Ellen Carey

(American, b.1952)

Large Grid, 1989

Ellen Carey’s photographs investigate abstraction and minimalism through the use of highly saturated color and pure form. This untitled grid of vibrant patterns and shapes, both figurative and abstract, creates a conceptual collage. This multi-paneled piece is intended, Carey says, to ”represent a departure from the picture-as-sign idea of photography, as well as from the historical and cultural expectation that photographs will describe, document, and narrate.”

Ellen Carey earned an MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a BA from the Kansas City Art Institute. Born in New York in 1952, Carey now lives and works in New York and Hartford, Connecticut. Her often manipulated and usually abstracted images have been shown in many solo and group exhibitions, including at The Ansel Adams Center for Photography, San Francisco; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Baltimore Museum of Art; CEPA Gallery, Buffalo; The National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC; and at Real Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut. The recipient of numerous awards, Carey is currently an associate professor at Hartford Art School, Hartford, Connecticut.

Carey, Ellen. Ellen Carey: Photographs. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1992.

Grundberg, Andy. Ellen Carey: Mourning Wall [exhibition brochure]. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, 2002.

Carey, Ellen, Catharine R. Stimpson and Barbara Hershey. Reflections: Woman’s Self-Image in Contemporary Photography [photographs by Ellen Carey … [et al.]; essays by Catharine R. Stimpson and Barbara Hershey; foreword by Edna Carter Southard]. Oxford, Ohio: Miami University Art Museum, 1988.

http://www.ellencarey.com