Alien landscapes

Dutch photographer Ellen Kooi looks to her rural surroundings to find the backdrop for her calm and enigmatic scenarios. And yet naturalism is not the point. The flat, water-logged plains and tidy, regimented woodlands of the Dutch landscape serve as the perfect foil to the whimsical instances of human peculiarity which she carefully stages. Kooi photographs people, usually children, either at play or in conversation with their environment in some way, and then edits the image on computer for that heightened finish. With her subjects forming human bridges, dabbling in synchronised tree-climbing or filing out from the sea, hers is a world of bizarre possibilities, where mundanity meets downright oddity.
Holly Kyte