Ellen Sollod, “La Flâneuse, Le Jardin et Les Fleurs”

by Matthew Kangas

The Seattle Light Room, Seattle

Continues through June 27, 2026

Ellen Sollod, “Fleurs Francaises,” altered French-Latin dictionary with photo transfers, 6 x 34” (when opened). All images courtesy of The Seattle Light Room, Seattle.

Best known as a maker of artist’s books and art-in-public-places projects, Ellen Sollod’s photographs have rarely been exhibited prior to “La Flâneuse, Le Jardin et Les Fleurs.” After spending years in Lyon, France as co-director of a study abroad program for the University of Washington, Sollod has consolidated her photographs from that time into a mixture of large-scale prints. Here she presents views of public gardens printed on Japanese rice paper. One series of flowers superimposed on the pages of antique French books is complemented with an accordion-style artist’s book of reproductions of floral still lifes from the Musée des beaux arts in Lyon.

Situated half-way between Paris and Provence in the south of France, Lyon is well known as the epicenter of avant-garde French cooking. But for Sollod its parks, museums, public buildings and outdoor squares provide the fodder for her highly imaginative manipulation of what might be mistaken for predictable tourist snapshots. That all are in black-and-white is the first clue that they are anything by ordinary.

Ellen Sollod, “La Flâneuse (arc gallo-romain),” archival pigment print, 36 x 44”.

Disposed into three categories, the exhibition offers a stroll through the artist’s mind as she inhabits the outdoor spaces surrounded by impressive public buildings such as the Hôtel de ville, a Roman amphitheater and ruined arch, and a severe topiary area within the public garden. Dubbed “La Flâneuse” (the lady stroller), “Le Jardin” (the garden), and “Les Fleurs” (the flowers, which cover the book pages and the artist’s book), the groupings are exhibited separately from one another and displayed according to scale and subject. The large-scale prints (35 by 40 inches) are sufficiently ample to convey the magnitude of the civic structures and the fountains, lawns and forested areas of the Botanical Garden.

The three largest prints, “Hôtel de ville,” “Arc gallo-romain”and“Jardin topiare” are oblique self-portraits. Timing the exposure to situate herself (back to the camera) in the middle of each site, Sollod extricates herself midway to create a faint ghost-like image that joins contemplation and sight-seeing. In doing so, she inserts herself into a long tradition of literary precedents dating as far back as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin. Each used the term “fllâneur” to describe the aimless wanderer or stroller in an urban context. All were open to novel experience derived from the observation of urban sights and types. In short, what we today call “people-watching,” often executed sitting down at sidewalk cafes and transiting between them.

Women strollers were less frequently mentioned in the novels of Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf. In contemporary artist Sophie Calle’s photowork she has used the activity to trace, follow or stalk ex-boyfriends.

Ellen Sollod, “L’if pleureur,” archival pigment print on Kozo Asuka 45 gsm, 11 1/4 x 9 1/2”.

Sollod’s solitary figure draws our attention to the architectural and botanical subjects she witnesses and, just as integral to the process, manipulates and alters to her own imaginative ends, much as Woolf does in “Mrs. Dalloway.” Involved yet detached, Sollod’s apparition participates in areas that are otherwise absent of onlookers. Pictures of Roman ruins, such as “Lugundum” and “Arc gallo-romain,” draw our attention to the city’s (and France’s) long history, both preserved and crumbling. “Lugundum” centers on an amphitheater with the artist as the sole actor, directed by a camera but depicted as a vanishing tragedienne.

The conical trees of the topiary garden and a smaller print-on-silk, “L’if pleureur,” (weeping willow) point up the differences between major French and English schools of landscape architecture. The former (think of Versailles) adheres to strict orderly layouts, geometric rows of trees and plants, and overall control of nature. The latter (which eventually themselves influenced French gardens) simulates the wildness and unplanned flow of nature. The branches of the weeping willow trees touch the pond’s edge and grasp the banks of the lawn, while the tightly trimmed cones create ornamental and sculptural aspects of nature, only tamed by French intellect and authority.

Ellen Sollod, “Le chemin,” archival pigment print on Kozo Asuka 45 gsm, 9 1/2 x 13”.

Among the other smaller prints-on-silk, “L’étang” (the pond) and “Le pont” (the bridge) reinforce an intimate viewing encounter. “Les deux arbres” (the two trees) and “La fontaine—sculpture” insert figurative surrogates in the form of the tall trees and the seated stone nude male figure at the fountain’s edge. These are ghosts of another sort, two about to come to life, the other degrading into posterity.

The colored flowers on antique book pages (“Amour nuptial” and “Mémoires”) are less original, harking back to Sollod’s artist books, and less mesmerizing than the black-and-white photos. The accordion flip book unravels the floral still lifes from the Lyon museum in an interesting way, but lacks the sculptural grip of her other artist’s books. Encased in a glass-topped display case, it frustrates our desire to pick it up and scan it at leisure — like a flâneur might, given time and a cup of café au lait.

Matthew Kangas writes regularly for Visual Art Source eNewsletter; Ceramics: Art & Perception (Australia); and Preview (Canada). Besides reviewing for many years at Art in America, American Craft, Art Ltd., Vanguard and Seattle Times, he is the author of numerous catalogs and monographs, the latest being the award-winning Italo Scanga 1932-2001. Four anthologies of his critical essays, reviews and interviews were issued by Midmarch Arts Press (New York) and available on Amazon at Books by Matthew Kangas.