About - Alannah Eileen

Make your own lore of the land.

Alannah Cooper is a photographer, writer and craftswoman, with an MA in Fashion Communication from Central Saint Martins and was the first recipient of the New Fashion Image Prize in 2018. Featured in The Gentlewoman, Moon Magazine and 5Eleven Magazine, Alannah looks to making as a form of communication and tradition as active rather than of the past.

Originally from the Orkney islands, Scotland, her ideas alive from the materials of rural land and the lore she grew up around. It is not uncommon for her work to feature family members, home towns, and the small patterns and details that can remind the viewer of their own. Today, she continues to search for new interpretations of rural surroundings that enchant the everyday life of craftsmanship, explore the accessibility of creativity, and promote the sustainability of fashion.

She enjoys developing relationships and engaging with people, which led to setting up Teran Community - an online platform connecting artists, designers and craftspeople, brought together by tradition and heritage, who are often rurally-based. Her practice regularly involves participation, taking the form of creative workshops, both in-person and online.

In her most recent commission for The Rural Gaze by Grain Projects, Alannah's work And if the day had other things to show, they are forgotten now focussed on the village customs, folklore and traditions found in the Staffordshire Moorlands and Peak District. She later discussed the complexity of local customs in the Rural Gaze symposium in May 2021, and her work will be featured in a publication of the same name in November 2021.

"It's rare to see such a clear, honest and unusual perspective as Alannah's in the landscape of fashion photography. Her work has a quiet tenderness but packs a sizeable punch when it comes to making us question ideas of routine, heritage and progress."

Lou Stoppard

Exhibitions

JUMP! LOOK Photography Biennial, Liverpool, October 2019

New photography from UK and China curated by Sian Bonnell

Beyond the Camera, Pingyao International Photography Festival 2019, Pingyao, China, September 2019

Emerging UK photography exhibition curated by Sian Bonnell.

Rewind/Rewild, OmVed Gardens, London, May 2019

Part of a group exhibition exploring ecological implication of rewilding while also considering the broader possibilities of rewilding human lives curated by Anna Souter and Beatrice Searle.

Seeing Same, The Old Library, Orkney Islands, April 2019

Exhibition of my fashion photography together with oil paintings by my granny, Jean Skinner.

New Fashion Image, 5 Carlos Place, London, December 2018

Group exhibition showcasing MA Fashion Communication students.

I’d Hate to be an Indoor Plant, Hill Street Design House, Edinburgh, December 2017