Bio:
I love Theatre, Dance, Photography and People…. So I feel very fortunate to be able to combine my passions with my work.
I graduated with distinction from Central St Martins School of Art and Design in Art Photography in 2002 and since then I have worked with leading British theatre and dance companies including The Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, Young Vic, Royal Opera House, Almeida Theatre, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Rambert Dance Company amongst others.
As a former ballerina I grew up in theatres and on stage, moving from being on stage to photographing shows was a very natural transition in my life. Theatres and stages have always been a familiar place where I feel comfortable. I have a strong connection and understanding of movement, which clients say is visible in my stage photography. My performing arts and portrait images are dynamic and according to my clients they display my genuine passion for the arts.
My photographs have appeared in Vogue, the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, the Independent and Time Out (London) and many other publications. I have participated in more than 40 exhibitions, including Shooting Shakespeare produced by the V&A and Globe to Globe at the Shakespeare’s Globe.
In 2006 I was made the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Artist-in-Residence and I have documented their work for more than a decade.
In 2011, Royal Mail issued 10 stamps commemorating the RSC 50th anniversary. My work featured on 4 of the 10 stamps.
2014 saw the opening of my first solo exhibition Shakespeare in Brazil. Launched at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brazil (CCBB), Shakespeare toured Brazil for 5 weeks, visiting Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Brasilia. More than 18,000 visitors went to the exhibition. My book Shakespeare by Ellie Kurttz was published the same year.
In 2015, I became an Ambassador of Spectaculu, a unique arts education school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I am delighted to be associated with a social enterprise that supports young marginalised people to reach their artistic potential.
In 2016 my exhibition Shakespeare, opened at the Brazilian British Centre in Sao Paulo as the official opening of Shakespeare Lives celebrations.
In 2018, after a wonderful 4 years working with 1418NOW following the Tower of London Poppies around Great Britain, creating a visual diary of the Poppies tour. My exhibition Poppies Reflections opened at the Imperial War Museum in October that year.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Current and past clients include:
ACASAGringoCardia
AKA
Almeida Theatre
Birmingham REP
Bristol Old Vic
Curve Theatre
Eleanor Lloyd Productions
Elliott & Harper Productions
Hampstead Theatre
Headlong
Historic Royal Palaces
Young Vic
Lift Festival
Little Angel
Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse Theatres
Marlowe Theatre
National Theatre
National Youth Theatre
Orange Tree Theatre
PPP (People’s Palace Projects)
The Print Room
The Corner Shop
Rambert Dance Company
Royal Opera House
The Royal Shakespeare Company
The Times
Sadlers Wells
Shakespeare’s Globe
Sydney Theatre Company
Soho Theatre
Sonia Friedman Productions
Westminster Abbey
WIA (Women in Architecture)
Recommendations
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The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).