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Ellen Kooi takes staged photographs. From 1981 until 1986 she attended the Minerva Academy in Groningen. In the period after the academy, she is mainly occupied with ad hoc projects and theatre photography. These series show clearly that in the city-landscapes by Kooi the central idea always evolves around people. People in motion, their outline, their body language, and their relation to their environment: all these elements make up the theme throughout her work. The work of photographer Jeff Wall is a source of inspiration to her, but also that of choreographers the likes of Bausch or De Keersemaker. Even more inverted is the move from the every day to the extraordinary, to strange and wringing in the most recent work by Ellen Kooi. Her photographs grow more severe as time goes by, and therefore all the more concentrated. Pietje Tegenbosch, 2002 |
