Darrel Ellis

Known for his experimental approach to painting and photography, New York–based mixed-media artist Darrel Ellis explored the psychic terrain between surface, memory and lyric self-representation. Working in part from his late father’s photographs, Ellis projected, deconstructed and reimaged his family history. This monograph provides the most comprehensive account of the artist to date, including 80 plates that chart his development from figurative painting to photographic experimentation.His commitment to the self-portrait was no less inspired, particularly after his experiences of being photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe and Peter Hujar. Ellis was on the cusp of major recognition when his life was cut short by AIDS in 1992, at the age of 33.Essays and an illustrated chronology featuring previously unseen excerpts from the artist’s journals provide new insights into Ellis’ life and work.Darrel Ellis (1958–92) was a Bronx-born artist whose work drew from a trove of images inherited from his father, a studio and street photographer working in Harlem in the 1950s, who was killed by the police shortly before his son’s birth. In 1989, Ellis participated in Nan Goldin’s Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, for which he made self-portraits based on photographs taken of him by Peter Hujar and Robert Mapplethorpe.
ISBN 9781732641556. Visual AIDS, New York. hb. 208 pages. 210 colour ills. 24.1 x 27.9 cm.
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