Ellen Dahl: Between Still and Moving

Ellen Dahl is not a landscape photographer. But the landscape does take a central role in her poetic, lens-based practice. The Arctic-born, Sydney-based artist’s work takes cue from cultural geographer and landscape theory pioneer John Brinckerhoff “Brinck” Jackson. Jackson writes that as he explored more landscapes, he realised it wasn’t their uniqueness that stood out, but their similarity. “It occurred to me that there might be such a thing as a prototypical landscape,” he writes, “or more precisely landscape as a primordial idea, of which these landscapes were merely so many imperfect manifestations.”

For Dahl, this alluring idea speaks to her own experience with the landscape. Working with both traditional photography and the moving image (and sometimes the spaces in between), she explores the ecological, the geographical and the geological, as well as expanded ideas around human and non-humanexchange, belonging and sense of place. Each project is meticulously researched, meaning Dahl holds a deep understanding of each landscape she visits. Her resulting works are not overtly dominating or forceful. But they do possess a quiet strength, an internal power that makes them incredibly affecting to view. They infuse within them an essence of Jackson’s “prototypical landscape”; one that connects us to the more-than-local and more-than-human…