Darrel Ellis | Regeneration
Darrel Ellis, Untitled (Self-Portrait after Museum Guard Photograph), ca. 1989-90. Gelatin silver print, 8x 10 in. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. © Darrel Ellis Estate and Candice Madey, New York.
Written by Nicole Miller
The first scholarly examination of Darrel Ellis’s vulnerable and complex oeuvre is displayed at The Bronx Museum of the Arts. Darrel Ellis: Regeneration allows viewers to rediscover Ellis through a comprehensive survey of his paintings, drawings, and photographs. Ellis’s career ended just as he gained artistic recognition when he passed away in 1992 at thirty-three due to an AIDS-related illness. The works in the gallery showcase his fascination with translating photography into different media, which led him to produce experimental variations of the same image. This unique rephotography practice pulls source material from Ellis’s archive and his father’s prints and negatives to create what Allen Frame, a fellow photographer and mentor of Ellis’s, calls an “estate within an estate.”
Darrel Ellis, Untitled (Grandfather Thomas and Cousin Irving), ca. 1990. The Baltimore Museum of Art: The William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, BMA 2019.160. © Darrel Ellis Estate and Candice Madey, New York.
The Ellis family resided in the Bronx, where the exhibition is fittingly located. Darrel Ellis’s father, Thomas, was a talented photographer who ran a photo studio in the South Bronx with his wife. Tragically, Thomas died in a confrontation with two plain-clothed police officers before Darrel was born. Although Thomas was physically absent from Darrel’s life, the father and son remained spiritually connected through Darrel's rephotography process. Ellis generated different iterations of the original images by projecting his father’s negatives on a geometrically shaped form and then distorting and concealing areas. Ellis remarks on his distinct technique, explaining how new photographs emerge as a metaphor for the idea of generations. “The photos, they’re like regeneration, regenerated, you know, from one, you get many. And that’s like a family.” Ellis embraced his own family’s history, working to investigate and understand the systemic racism Black families experience in America.
To contextualize Ellis’s brilliance, we must remember that New York City in the 1980s was the epicenter of relaxation, and family portraiture, especially that of a Bronx family, was not in vogue. Ellis referenced the nineteenth century while his peers experimented with popular art forms, such as graffiti. Ellis remained faithful to his conceptual direction through the noise of new art movements, constructing a beautiful overlook of his family history
Darrel Ellis, Untitled (Laure on Easter Sunday), ca. 1989-1991. Courtesy of Candice Madey, New York and The Darrel Ellis Estate. © Darrel Ellis Estate and Candice Madey, New York.
Darrel Ellis, Untitled (Laure on Easter Sunday), ca. 1989-1991. Courtesy of Candice Madey, New York and The Darrel Ellis Estate. © Darrel Ellis Estate and Candice Madey, New York.
The images above depict Ellis’s older sister, Laure, holding a stuffed bunny on Easter Sunday. Ellis’s father took the original photograph. Ellis rephotographed the negative at least six times, creating holes of different shapes and various colors over Laure’s face. The photographs are psychologically charged, presenting a fractured family and allowing Ellis to reflect on the childhood he could not experience with his father. Ellis explores a past he can only reimagine, emphasizing the incompleteness of his family, but at the same time paying homage to his father and continuing his legacy.
Darrel Ellis, Untitled (Self-Portrait after Allen Frame Photograph), ca. 1990. Colored ink on gelatin silver print, 8 x 10 in. Collection of Tim Garvey. © Darrel Ellis Estate and Candice Madey, New York.
Ellis also employed his rephotography practice to create self-portraits. He even reinterpreted other photographers’ work that featured Ellis as the model. His representation as a Black man was integral to his identity, and his portraiture process remains socially significant, as portraits of Black men were and continue to be left out of the canon. In a notebook, Ellis wrote, “Portraiture is a 19th-century genre. I’m a black male in the 20th century. How to insert my work into this tradition?” Ellis answered this question by remaining curious and authentic throughout his quest for self-acceptance. He is now finally securing his status as a pioneering artist in the contemporary art world.
