Come and Seek with me Elsewhere, the work by Ellinor Westin
The Book Come and Seek with me Elsewhere is a retrospective. It contains the work by an artist whose life ended too early and who’s work never was allowed to come to full fruition but which nevertheless is extremely rich in nuances and complexity.
Ellinor's work was loved and well known by other artists and photographers. Our shared conviction was that her work was worth much more attention in the public realm than what it had gotten during her lifetime so we agreed to make a book with her collected works.
The book received an honorary award in SFF’s 2016 book of the year and support from the Swedish Cultural Council.
Image Credit Ellinor Westin ©Estate of Artist
The work which spans throughout her career, from her very early until her death, uncovers an unruly practice of staged and street imagery as well a landscape, portrait and travel photography. It is held together by the recurring self-portraits from her very early images shot at the age of 20 until she died 17 years later.
Image Credit Ellinor Westin ©Estate of Artist
Image Credit Ellinor Westin ©Estate of Artist
Image Credit Ellinor Westin ©Estate of Artist
The book which is edited without regard to chronological order by 3 friends of Ellinor’s bear witness about a bold being's search for identity, belonging and existential meaning but also very much of the individual editors subjective experience of their friendship with her. Divided into chapters with titles derived from Ellinors own writing which always correlated to what was going on in her life. Its chaos and serenity, stark reality and dream.
Image Credit Ellinor Westin ©Estate of Artist
Divided into chapters with titles derived from Ellinors own writing which, always correlated to what was going on in her life, its chaos and serenity, stark reality and dream. Images related to the cancer experience may be sitting right next to an image of an informal performance –– a man in underwear filming the photographer and a young woman standing with flashed red eyes and smeared lipstick and a plastic mermaid in her hand –– in a crowded space, makes the book both dead serious and humorous and curiously uncanny at times.
Image Credit Ellinor Westin ©Estate of Artist
Image Credit Ellinor Westin ©Estate of Artist
Image Credit Ellinor Westin ©Estate of Artist
Toward the end of the book there is a timeline which allows the reader to make some chronological sense of the artist’s life. The Three first images include Ellinor with her Thai mother Anna Nuansamili, her father a Vietnam posted American soldier corporal John Word and the first image taken with her Swedish adoptive mother Majken Westin.
After this there is a page with the names of the over 250 people who crowdfunded to realise this book and the in the end the words:
To suddenly identify the source of a scent I have known since I was small.
A stroll through the streets of Bangkok.
The scent. A flower on a bush. So familiar, so much like home.
A small insignificant discovery that made me feel the search was complete.
Standard Edition
Printing: Full Colour Offset Göteborgs Tryckeri
Prepress: Projektor AB Stockholm
Graphic Design Compañeros
Binding: Hard Cover
Trim size: 245 x175mm
Extent: 103 images spread of 145 pages
£27 or sek 310
We also have a pink edition to the price of £500 where the profit goes to the cancer research organisation The Pink Ribbon (Swedish Rosa Bandet). The book as supported by Längmanska Kultur Fonden och Kultur Nämndens biblioteks stöd. To buy any of these contact us. soundofapicture@gmail.com
Book cover standard edition.
