Within from Without: Ellen Kooi

The starting-point for Kooi’s photographs (born 1962, Leeuwarden, Netherlands) is the Dutch landscape, which she transforms into the setting for ambiguous and inexplicable events. The apparent naturalism of her images, which always have the spontaneity of a snapshot, in fact derives from a complex creative process involving preparatory drawings, models, and design of the lighting and location in a way comparable to film or to the work of the great Baroque painters. This blending of naturalism and artifice gives Ellen Kooi’s photographs a troubling atmosphere and one that exerts an undeniable attraction over the viewer’s gaze.