Ellen Carey is an American artist known for conceptual photography exploring non-traditional approaches involving process, exposure, and paper. Her work has ranged from painted and multiple-exposure, Polaroid 20 x 24, Neo-Geo self-portraits beginning in the late 1970s to cameraless, abstract photograms and minimal Polaroid images from the 1990s onward, which critics often compare to color-field painting. Carey's sixty one-person exhibitions have been presented at museums, such as the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, International Center of Photography and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, alternative spaces such as Hallwalls and Real Art Ways, and many commercial galleries. Her work is in numerous museum collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou, and Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 2019, she was named one of the Royal Photographic Society "Hundred Heroines", recognizing leading women photographers worldwide.