Nadja Ellinger

German photographer Nadja Ellinger blurs the line between fantasy and reality with her work, which explores the volatility of fairy tales. In her practice, her camera’s viewfinder becomes a stage where the figures she captures can play and explore. Working with friends, her family, and her own body, Nadja describes the process of creating her images as a dreamlike state that “stitches worlds together…the tale developing slowly…like a living creature.”

If you are interested in Nadja’s work, please visit her website or Instagram, and send all enquiries to info@nadjaellinger.de.

About:

Nadja was born and raised in a small medieval town in Germany. Growing up spending time in the forest and with books, Nadja fell in love with fairy tales, folklore, and storytelling, all themes now central to her artistic practice. For her bachelor’s degree, she studied fashion photography, but found she was always more interested in the storytelling aspect of the photos than the fashion industry itself. Last year, she completed a master’s degree in art photography at the Royal College of Art in London, which allowed her to explore artistic practices and dive into intensive research of fairy tales and oral narrative structures.

Untitled from ‘Path of Pins’ — *Untitled* from ‘Path of Pins’

“I initially started working with film and photography because it seemed to be the most suitable medium for telling stories. Only later did I realise that photography is always a reproduction, a flawed retelling, and thus resembles oral storytelling in many aspects.” - Nadja

A Nice Bouquet of Flowers from ‘Path of Pins’ — *A Nice Bouquet of Flowers* from ‘Path of Pins’

Nadja’s photography explores fairy tales and the fluidity of oral tradition. She notes that fairy tales have the ability to communicate across languages and geographical borders while also inviting participation and expansive new retellings. In her practice, the viewfinder of the camera becomes the stage and an in-between space in which her figures can play and explore. The process of photography is a cyclical one, Nadja says, describing how the camera devours the outside world into its own body, a process which is reversed as soon as she places the images out into the world to be consumed by the viewer’s gaze, connecting the physical and psychical worlds.

“The fairy tale’s strength lies in its ability to retell itself, thus constantly adapting to new languages, environments, and people. The fact that it wasn’t written down, fixed by a literary pin, enabled it to evolve freely.” – Nadja

Installation Shot of ‘Path of Pins’ in Fitzrovia Chapel

Interested in the possibilities of softening the border between her art and its audience, Nadja began to experiment with textiles and installations. Her installation pieces invite the viewer to become a part of the work and participate in it, invoking the playful, democratic, and participatory elements of folklore and storytelling, and reflecting the interest of her work in adapting the transitional space.

Nadja has dedicated the last three years of her practice to “Path of Pins,” a visual retelling of Little Red Riding Hood revolving around adolescence and the ever-changing representation of female characters in folklore. She explains:

“In one of the earliest spoken versions of the fairytale, which later inspired Charles Perrault to write his Petit Chaperon Rouge, the wolf asks the unnamed heroine: ‘Which path will you take?’ She responds by choosing the path of pins; the careless and fleeting one, as opposed to the path of needles and the irreversible way of the wolf.

The decision to take the path of pins reflects two interesting aspects: On a personal level, by refusing to follow the prescribed path, the heroine decides to stay a child and favours the state of innumerable possibilities. Exploring what lies beyond, she leads us deep into the forest.

On an abstract level, the metaphor of pins and needles relates to the treatment of fairy tales. Like a butterfly collector, Perrault kills the living, ever-evolving oral tale, to present it to the reader in a pose he artificially forced upon it. He coerces the heroine into the corset of his ideologies. Compared to the early variants of the narrative, where the heroine tricks the wolf, Perrault reduces her to a naive girl guilty of her own violation.”

In “Path of Pins,” Nadja spins the damsel in distress narrative frequently portrayed in fairy tale adaptations by pop culture, like Disney, into a story where the female figure has pathways and choices that reach beyond domestication and sexualisation.