Ellen Enderle

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“Faute de soleil, sache mûrir dans la glace.”

Henri Michaux, extrait de Poteaux d’angle

Collage experiment © Ellen Enderle

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Our lady of dust. Our lady of dusk. 

Collage experiment © Ellen Enderle

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Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid...

Collage experiment © Ellen Enderle

Now that lilacs are in bloom She has a bowl of lilacs in her room And twists one in his fingers while she talks. "Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know What life is, you who hold it in your hands"; (Slowly twisting the lilac stalks...)/

Well! and what if she should die some afternoon, Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose.../

Would she not have the advantage, after all? This music is successful with a "dying fall" Now that we talk of dying— And should I have the right to smile?

–– excerpts from Portrait of a Lady by T. S. Eliot 

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Ephemeral 

Collage experiment © Ellen Enderle

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Est-il art plus tendre.

Collage experiment © Ellen Enderle

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“but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness“

Collage experiment © Ellen Enderle

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So excited to finally announce the release of Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography! When The Walther Collection held a symposium on vernacular photography at Columbia University while I was a student there (video of symposium can be viewed here) I never imagined I would be working on a book with them just a short time later. It was a delight to delve into the Walther Collection’s fantastic vernacular photography collection, scanning and editing photos and photographing objects for what would be this wonderful book, and a total honor to have some of my original research and caption writing included. This is the first book I have ever worked on, and I am so grateful to The Walther Collection for inviting me to assist and take part in the process. If you are curious to learn more about the significance of vernacular photography, do check out this book. You can learn more about it here, and purchase from Steidl here or from Amazon here. Includes texts by Ariella Azoulay, Geoffrey Batchen, Ali Behdad, Elspeth Brown, Clément Chéroux, Lily Cho, Nicole Fleetwood, Sophie Hackett, Patricia Hayes, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Thy Phu, Leigh Raiford, Shawn Michelle Smith, Drew Thompson, Laura Wexler, and Deborah Willis.

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Collage experiment © Ellen Enderle

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hesitate             A moment

© Ellen Enderle

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One must be a sea...

© Ellen Enderle

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A candid portrait, shot in Greenwood cemetery. 

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Hel

Hægl byþ hƿitust corna; hƿyrft hit of heofones lyfte, ƿealcaþ hit ƿindes scura; ƿeorþeþ hit to ƿætere syððan.

Collage experiment, inspired by Hagalaz rune. 

© Ellen Enderle

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Collage experiment

© Ellen Enderle

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One of my favorite photographs that I took of the Walther Collection’s vernacular collection for the Steidl publication Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography. Styling this array of quite risqué images *just so* was quite the memorable experience!  

About these works from collection: 

This inauspicious breadbox contains a surprising collection of approximately 980 small risqué and erotic photographs, derived from American and European sources, depicting a wide range of steamy sexual activities, and sorted into neatly numbered en- velopes. The early images, from about 1905 to about 1940, were uniformly copied around 1945, reportedly by a clandestine dealer of erotic photographic materials. The breadbox of images was once owned by the artist and erotica collector Richard Merkin (1938– 2009), who described it in his 1985 book Velvet Eden.

 Unidentified photographer (American), [Pornographer’s breadbox], ca. 1905–ca. 1940. Metal breadbox filled with gelatin silver prints in manila envelopes.

Photo by Ellen Enderle ©

All objects courtesy of The Walther Collection. 

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Collage experiment

© Ellen Enderle

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Collage experiment

© Ellen Enderle

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Collage experiment, hommage to Cleo de Merode. 

© Ellen Enderle