John Bezold

Dutch photographer Ellen Kooi’s constructed situations amalgamate theater with landscape, realism and romanticism. Her human subjects–often children or those on the verge of adolescence–lend a patina of fantasy and are often accompanied by water, which to her is ‘like a second person.’ ‘I think people can recognize themselves in my images, they can become restless as to what lies behind this beauty,’ she explains. ‘I hope to use my little lies to tell something that I hope is more true, or that people recognize within themselves, their own fears or subjects; what’s just under their surface.’