Annabel Elston
Somewhere Else
128 pages
32 cm x 24.5 cm Landscape
60 colour plates
Hardcover
Steidl / Miles
Annabel Elston’s photographs reveal a shadowy truth, where private moments appear in public places.
While the photographs share ephemeral emotions, they also portray a photographer walking among the
streets,
straying from one side to the other, almost as invisible as a ghost. The expressions stamped
on faces appear
transcendental, but the emotions are concrete. Empathy is a useful trait for a street
photographer to possess.
The ability to recognize and identify the joy or disenchantment of others
prepares the street photographer
to shape a picture. Working in this manner, the photographer sees the
world constructed not with walls, pavement
or buildings but built with an architecture of emotions.
In photography it is clear that a person with a camera
aimed at another is never simply observing but
connecting to the subject as well. Elston gives us proximity
beyond mere observation and we become
immersed in the subject’s thoughts and decisions. The strangers are seductive
and their anonymity
enviable. Through the photographer we politely invade sleeping thoughts ready to rise.
For the past 15 years, Elston has lived and worked in London and Cornwall. Inspired by her environment,
her photographs
are diverse, including still lives, portraits, interiors and reportage. Her editorial
work includes The World of Interiors,
House and Garden, Observer magazine and Japanese Vogue. She has
received advertising commissions from Hermes, Habitat, Volvo
and Guinness, as well as contributing to
a number of publications such as Pure Fuel, Fuel 3000, Surface Contemporary Photography,
and Tord Boontje.
In 2007 the British Council commissioned her to photograph forty British nationals living in Turkey,
resulting in her first exhibition with venues scheduled for London and Turkey.
