Ellen Carr Lederman is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute. She also studied at the University of Chicago, San Francisco State College, and The California College of Arts and Crafts. Her teaching experience includes high school photography programs at Morton West and East High Schools, Morton College, The Winona School of Professional Photography, and the graduate summer program at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.
A lifetime of travel with first her Naval Officer family and later with her husband, she has found aesthetic satisfaction in visual images of ordinary objects: windows, doors, stairwells, stained walls and other, often passed by scenes. These are strongly accented by the use of black and white film and large or medium formats cameras.
There is emphasis on shadow detail, geometric shapes, and interesting patters, highlighted on sun drenched walls. On closer look the dark shadows reveal a surprise, a small deeply shaded window, a fragment of lace curtain, or, perhaps a weathered hinge and lock. Ellen's photographs reveal bold splashes while at the same time hide subtle patterns.
These photographs, superficially are the documentation of special places around the world, but in reality, revel the artist's interpretation, for all of us, how to see patterns of beauty in the ordinary.
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