Eleanor Odell

I seek to use photography as a means of exploring specific aspects of both my and other people’s lives. Consistently I am drawn to people’s relationship with their environment. I look at notions of personal space and the contradictions between secrecy and public display. I also examine people’s intimate relationship with their homes, their streets and their towns.

My most recent body of work ‘In praise of shadows’ looks at the complex relationship that people have with space/emptiness and the emotions that this evokes. These images are structured to demonstrate the complex relationship of space and time and how they relate to individual people. My work is an attempt to understand and subsequently depict memory. The images encourage the recall of a particular moment or particular feeling. The more I have explored the concept of memory and how it relates to vacated and transitional spaces, the more I feel memory is something tangible and not just confined to one person’s mind. I feel that spaces themselves are a visual demonstration of memory and my images illustrate their physical manifestation.

Although a space is bare and empty, they are awash feelings and sensations. My work looks at the great emotional complexity that has built up over years of relationships with people.