El Hardwick (they/them) is a London based photographer, musician and director. their multidisciplinary practice also encompasses workshop facilitation and curatorial work for events, exhibitions and publications. their work explores relationships between bodies and their surrounding environments, queer world making practices, and how we can heal on a damaged planet.
el has exhibited in London, Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Oxford, Lisbon and Brighton, at galleries including The V&A Museum, Palais De Tokyo, The Southbank Centre and The Cob Gallery. they have also performed their music internationally and done talks on their work for Oxford and Cambridge University and london college of communication.
they have been featured by platforms including Dazed, i-D, BBC Radio 4, British Vogue, The Guardian, The British Journal Of Photography, The Independent, purple fashion, buffalo zine, crack magazine, the wire, 4:3 & more. for a list of their commercial photographic clients, see here.
in 2016, they self published their first book, celestial bodies, which was created in collaboration with their sister rachel hardwick and us-based photographer chrissie white.
2020 saw the release of el hardwick’s debut album, titled 8, released on 33-33. a climate fiction told in three mediums, the lp is accompanied by a 40-page book of poetry and photographs taken in collaboration with chrissie white, clara pathe and justina goldbeck.
their follow up record, process of elimination, came out in 2024 on ad 93. it explores themes of rewilding the body, through the lenses of both their non-binary identity and experience of sickness, as teachers for anti-capitalist modes of being.
in 2020 el launched desire lines: a series of occasional multidisciplinary projects that centre community healing at the intersection of music, art and ecology.