ELLIOT LAUREN
The Melbourne cool girl shooting Melbourne’s cool people. Elliott Lauren’s Tumblr could read like the popular pages of a high school year book; everyone of her subjects oozes swag and untouchable street cred. The RMIT photography student says she simply makes use of what’s around her, places, and of course, cool-ass-people.
“I got pretty lucky, I was in a year with lots of QTs [cuties] that make good work in Melbourne; Michelle Huynh, Mikey Whyte, Olivia Tran and Phebe Schmidt.” She explains this is what lead to her publishing her own book; which can be found in the Asia Pacific Photobook Archive and is titled 100 Like Guarantee.
“Last year I was feeling like I was surrounded by all these intensely talented interesting productive women and I wanted to make this collection of them as like a stamp on this particular time and feeling, like the moment just before they all explode with intense money and fame. And they also look really fuck-off cool too! Lots of them were people I had seen around and were friends of friends and I had wanted to photograph them for years, so it was cool to have a project to have an excuse to finally do it”.
Besides her gang of friends general “cool kid” aesthetics, she is also drawn to their success, and their projects inspire her own.
“I feel like a lot of my energy and excitement comes from seeing my friends and friends of friends making and doing cool things and being great people. And then getting to work with them or skill swapping, and even talking about each other’s work is helpful for drive too. Some of my favourite shoots are ones where I get to collaborate on their ideas, like Property [a band] gave me the best brief ever "we want to be rained on in full attire. Like, being hot and sexual but intensely wet. How do you feel about it?" And I was like uh YES!”
The year book like aesthetic of Lauren’s work is also reflected in the clean slate like appearance of her Tumblr. It’s minimal and very little fuss, and when she explains why it really is a case of capitalising on what her surroundings have to offer, as most talented creatives do.
“I think just having 24/7 access to a fully equipped photography studio for a year; my final year of uni, lead most of my work to be done there. So, I think the clean slate thing just happened because I was a student. I wasn’t rolling in cash to build sets and didn’t, and still don’t, have a drivers license for sick locations. I had this unlimited access to this space, and then as that work started developing it was looking more and more clean.”
Elliott’s work also seems to have fashion related content as her still life subjects are more often than not repping unique threads, and the few shots of herself on her Instagram do show one fly gurl. This is particularly evident in her recent project working on the lookbook-esque shoot for new niche label store Distal Phalanx.
“Fashion used to scare me a bit but now I'm more comfortable wearing and shooting it,” she reveals, continuing; “DP got everyone to style themselves from all the stock & invited the people that are like, going to be wearing it IRL. DP is the only Australian stockist for a lot of the brands in the store, she's a good curator. And the actual store space is sweet, it’s an experience, so like, go down there and see it if you can, coz’ Insta doesn’t cut it.”
So what’s next for this up and coming Melbourne photog? “Grand plans” is all she has to say.
No doubt.
Words / Jamie-Maree Shipton
http://www.elliottlauren.info
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“I got pretty lucky, I was in a year with lots of QTs [cuties] that make good work in Melbourne; Michelle Huynh, Mikey Whyte, Olivia Tran and Phebe Schmidt.” She explains this is what lead to her publishing her own book; which can be found in the Asia Pacific Photobook Archive and is titled 100 Like Guarantee.
“Last year I was feeling like I was surrounded by all these intensely talented interesting productive women and I wanted to make this collection of them as like a stamp on this particular time and feeling, like the moment just before they all explode with intense money and fame. And they also look really fuck-off cool too! Lots of them were people I had seen around and were friends of friends and I had wanted to photograph them for years, so it was cool to have a project to have an excuse to finally do it”.
Besides her gang of friends general “cool kid” aesthetics, she is also drawn to their success, and their projects inspire her own.
“I feel like a lot of my energy and excitement comes from seeing my friends and friends of friends making and doing cool things and being great people. And then getting to work with them or skill swapping, and even talking about each other’s work is helpful for drive too. Some of my favourite shoots are ones where I get to collaborate on their ideas, like Property [a band] gave me the best brief ever "we want to be rained on in full attire. Like, being hot and sexual but intensely wet. How do you feel about it?" And I was like uh YES!”
The year book like aesthetic of Lauren’s work is also reflected in the clean slate like appearance of her Tumblr. It’s minimal and very little fuss, and when she explains why it really is a case of capitalising on what her surroundings have to offer, as most talented creatives do.
“I think just having 24/7 access to a fully equipped photography studio for a year; my final year of uni, lead most of my work to be done there. So, I think the clean slate thing just happened because I was a student. I wasn’t rolling in cash to build sets and didn’t, and still don’t, have a drivers license for sick locations. I had this unlimited access to this space, and then as that work started developing it was looking more and more clean.”
Elliott’s work also seems to have fashion related content as her still life subjects are more often than not repping unique threads, and the few shots of herself on her Instagram do show one fly gurl. This is particularly evident in her recent project working on the lookbook-esque shoot for new niche label store Distal Phalanx.
“Fashion used to scare me a bit but now I'm more comfortable wearing and shooting it,” she reveals, continuing; “DP got everyone to style themselves from all the stock & invited the people that are like, going to be wearing it IRL. DP is the only Australian stockist for a lot of the brands in the store, she's a good curator. And the actual store space is sweet, it’s an experience, so like, go down there and see it if you can, coz’ Insta doesn’t cut it.”
So what’s next for this up and coming Melbourne photog? “Grand plans” is all she has to say.
No doubt.
Words / Jamie-Maree Shipton
http://www.elliottlauren.info
