Buck Ellison (b.1987, San Francisco) currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He received BAs in both German Literature and Visiual Arts from Columbia University, New York in 2010, and an MFA from the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 2014.

Ellison’s practice produces a deep network of inquiry into how whiteness and privilege are sustained and broadcast. In his photographs, Buck Ellison examines the ostensibly frivolous material signifiers of white elitist societies to initiate broader conversations on class and inequality. Ellison’s highly stylized and arranged mise-en-scenes of upper-class quietude magnify the immensity of who and what is not portrayed but imaginably resides just down the hill from the staged, skylit kitchens and rosebush-lined driveways where his sun-basked actors roleplay the lives of the blissfully preoccupied leisure set. In their exclusion, the circumstances of the lives just outside of frame somehow become more present, enveloping the smug smiles, radiant flowers, and light-drenched interiors in an unsettling pall.