Ellie Davies

Smoke and Mirrors 5 - Ellie Davies, Fairytales, Childhood, Trees, Plants, Dreams

2010

Ellie Davies is a fine art photographer who completed an MA in photography at the London College of Communication in 2008. Davies has been working in the forests of the UK for the past seven years, producing work that explores the complex interrelationship between the landscape and the individual. Her career goes from strength to strength. In 2017, she won the Magnum Photography Award, Fine Art Category and The People's Choice Award at the Aesthetica Art Prize 2016 both for her Stars series. She has also been awarded prizes at many prestigious Art Awards, including 1st place in the 2015 Smithsonian Photo Contest. She was recognized at the Barcelona International Photography Awards - Top 50 Photographers 2015 and was the Selectors Choice of the Royal Photographic Society’s 2015 Annual Exhibition. Davies has also been awarded the Kontinent Awards (2014), Art Gemini (2014), the Professional Women Photographers International Juried Exhibition (2012), Lens Culture International Exposure Awards (2011) and the PX3 Paris Prix de la Awards (2010). Her work has been extensively exhibited in solo and group shows in The Netherlands, London, Paris, Budapest, Kyiv, Moscow, St. Petersburg, The Rencontres d'Arles and last year at The Roe Valley Arts and Cultural Center, Northern Ireland and the Houston Centre for Photography. Davies’s work explores the fabricated nature of the landscape by making a variety of temporary and non-invasive interventions in the forest, which places the viewer in the gap between reality and fantasy. Creating this space encourages the viewer to re-evaluate how their relationship with the landscape is formed, and the extent to which it is a product of cultural heritage or personal experience.