PR and Media Manager | Compassion UK
Photojournalism MA- 2013
The Master’s gave me the chance to develop my own visual language as a Photojournalist. I gained useful insights from industry experts. I learnt skills that would support the work I would end up doing for years to come.
Ella attended The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London for her BA undergraduate course where she studied African languages, including Swahili, and International Development. Her final paper provided a critique of colonial photography. During her studies she travelled and worked in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
She completed her Master’s in Photojournalism at the University of Westminster, with a final exhibition at the Marylebone C3 Gallery, highlighting the themes of migration and isolation. The project was narrated by a farmer she met on Cape Clear Island in South-West Ireland. The project asked questions like: How do you photograph the past? How do you capture the essence of what a place once was, without undermining its present? Can someone who is blind, perceive the world around them with no less vibrancy than someone with vision?
In September 2013, Ella was awarded the Oxfam Exposure Photography Award for Women for her series on first-time voters and young political activists in the 2013 Kenyan General Election. The award provided assignment work in Chad’s Bahr-el-Gazel desert region, which had been affected by successive droughts and the increasing effects of climate change. During the assignment, Ella was mentored by Magnum Photos photographer, Bieke Depoorter.
Recently she completed a collaborative project commissioned by the newly opened $400m Western Australian Museum, Boola Bardip. She worked with Perth-based photographer and filmmaker Jeremy Tan to produce eight films, sharing the stories of six residents of Perth. The films, made in partnership with the Centre for Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Detainees, are a permanent exhibit in the new museum’s Connections gallery. In June 2021, the exhibit was awarded the winner of the Research Category for the 2021 Australian Museums and Galleries National Awards.
For the last seven years, Ella has worked for humanitarian organisations and not-for-profits. Her humanitarian work has been published by BBC, Marie Claire, Elle, Psychologies, Stylist Magazine and Christian Today. It has also been exhibited at OXO Tower, the Houses of Parliament, the Salvation Army International Headquarters and 02 Arena, Greenwich.
She currently works for Compassion International, serving a team of local photojournalists who live and work in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.