Geoffrey Ellis

Geoffrey Ellis is a photographer who went to school to be a graphic designer. His dad gave him his first camera way back in 1989, which he used until it was stolen from his car along with a full basket of clean laundry. He publishes photo-zines called Sadkids, and Get Off My Lawn, loves road trips, collecting junk and taking pictures.

He is co-founder of the Vegas Vernacular Project, founder of the Las Vegas Camera Club and was a recipient of the 2007 James D. Phelan Art Award in photography. In 2013 he earned an MFA in photography from the University of Hartford Art School.

He has lived in southern California, all throughout Florida, in Memphis and in San Jose. He currently splits his time between San Francisco’s Mission District and Downtown Las Vegas. He has a beautiful son and daughter, a lot of junk, and one really old cat.

Artist Statement

In This Must Be The Place I explore the tensions of a place where an amplified sense of desperation, loneliness, and violence all exist in tandem with power, sexuality, glamor, and good fortune where the consequences and cruelty of life are played out every second.

The Las Vegas I imagine is one not too divorced from reality, where the extremes of luxury and vice are out in the open and the lure of promise draws one in. It is a place that is as seductive as it is repellent.

Solo Exhibitions

Awards/Honors

2014

Beth Block Juried Membership Honoraria | Houston Center for Photography

PDN 2014 Photo Annual

2010

Photo-Eye Best photo books of 2010 list for Get Off My Lawn (Chosen by Larissa Leclair of Independent Photobook Library)

2007

James D. Phelan Art Award in Photography (Juried by Daniell Cornell, and Lisa Dent)