The Bold Journey Interview
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We were lucky to catch up with Ellen Friedlander recently and have shared our conversation below.
Ellen, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?
That’s a great question. As a late bloomer, I’ve thought about this a lot. It took me a long time to understand, listen and hold space for my creativity. I was busy raising children, moving around, living abroad, working on a marriage, and it all literally took me out of the creative sphere. However, I needed to take photographs and be creative and I found that having my camera with me all the time helped keep my passion alive. I decided my best course of action during these busy and tumultuous years was to focus on my technical abilities. I listened to my inner voice to stay the course. I sought out any and all opportunities to make photographs for other people and to document my family. I have learned from this journey to listen. To not take for granted when ideas come and allow them to transcend from the heart to the hand. Making photographs, even horribly bad ones, helped me stay emotionally stable.
The other aspect that I craved and knew I needed was to find my creative community. This only just happened upon moving to LA in 2018 when I met other photographers in workshops and at shows and started to develop my own artistic community. I have always been curious and interested in other artists and their work, so moving to Los Angeles, a city with so many artists, museums, and art shows made it easy to expand my circle. There is great vitality in sharing others’ art and their journeys. This is inspiring and keeps my creativity invigorated.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I was born in Utica, New York. And grew up in both Utica and Old Forge which is an even tinier mountain town at the threshold of the Adirondack Mountains. I grew up with family all around me and my paternal grandparents were an integral part of my childhood. My grandmother was an amazing cook and loved sharing our Friday Night dinners with extended family members. All of whom were characters in their own right and I enjoyed their eccentricity. My Father loved and collected art, my Mother designed and created her own clothes, and my grandfather took up cartooning in his 70’s. At 16 my father gave me my first 35 mm camera. I fell hard for the medium and looked at it as a means that would help me find my way out of my small town. In those early years I used my camera to document every aspect of my life and those around me. As I write, I imagine that my love of portraiture stems from my family allowing me to point my camera at them, at whim, and attempt to capture their spirit…. CONTINUE READING INTERVIEW