Elina Brotherus works in photography and moving image. Her work has been alternating between autobiographical and art-historical approaches. Photographs dealing with the human figure and the landscape, the relation of the artist and the model, gave way to images on subjective experiences in her recent bodies of work Annonciation and Carpe Fucking Diem. In her current work she is revisiting Fluxus event scores and other written instructions for performance-oriented art of the 1950s-70s. Elina Brotherus lives and works in Helsinki, Finland and Avallon, France. She has an MA degree in Photography from the University of Art and Design Helsinki (now Aalto University) and an MSc in Chemistry from the University of Helsinki. She started exhibiting internationally in 1997. Her works are in public collections including the Pompidou Centre, Paris, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Museum Folkwang, Essen, and MAXXI, Rome, to name a few. Her work has been given prominence in numerous art and photography books and magazines. She has published eleven monographs, most recently ‘Seabound. A Logbook’ with AKO Kunststiftelse and Kehrer Verlag. She has been awarded, among others, Carte blanche PMU, France, in 2017, the Finnish State Prize for Photography in 2008, and the […]
Harry Morey Callahan Harry Morey Callahan was an American photographer and educator. He taught at both the Institute of Design in Chicago and the Rhode Island School of Design. Callahan’s first solo exhibition was at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1951. He had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1976/1977. Wikipedia ‘Callahan was widely respected in the photography community for his open mind and experimental attitude, qualities reinforced by his association with Moholy-Nagy and the principles of Bauhaus design. He produced work in both formalist and more documentary modes, and worked in both black-and-white and color.’ https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/harry-callahan?all/all/all/all/0 Callaghan didn’t leave much notes or documentation about his methods but what is known is that he would go out daily and photograph his neighbourhood, the streets, buildings, and city scenes. He also photographed his wife and daughter, and much of his work was a response to his own life. He experimented with double and triple exposures and pushed the possibilities of photography. WeeGee Arthur Fellig Arthur (Usher) Fellig (June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968), known by his pseudonym Weegee, was a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography in […]
Typologies are a useful tool for photographers to use for visual classification in both a stoic and detached manner (Hilla and Bernd Becher-industrial architecture) or creatively (Steve Tyler-Typologies of Mass Consumption) Key elements of typologies include: Uniformity of presentation Ability to see similarities as well as differences Provide historical record (August Sander / Bechers) Exercise of attribution within a category re-present archives (Arwed Messmer und Annett Gröschner) plural noun: typologies 1.a classification according to general type, especially in archaeology, psychology, or the social sciences. “a typology of Saxon cremation vessels” study or analysis using a classification according to a general type. 2.the study and interpretation of types and symbols, originally especially in the Bible. https://www.google.com/search?q=typologies+definition&oq=typologies+definition&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l2j0i15i22i30l2j0i22i30l5.5964j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Britannica Dictionary definition of TYPOLOGY. [count, noncount] formal. : a system used for putting things into groups according to how they are similar : the study of how things can be divided into different types. (https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/typology) ‘Photography has been employed as tool for visual classification. The camera’s ability to make an accurate record of particular visual phenomena has meant that artists and photographers, seeking to make a systematic document of aspects of the world, have been repeatedly drawn to photography. In their hands, the camera […]
‘at every level,and within every context the portrait photgraphy is fraught with ambiguity’-Graham clarke The Portrait in Photgraphy The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.-Henri Cartier-Bresson “A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed.” – Richard Avedon “A portrait isn’t a fact but an opinion – an occasion rather than a truth.”-Richard Avedon A good portrait ought to tell something of the subject’s past and suggest something of his future.-Bill Brandt To see people as they are, as they imagine themselves, as they wish to be. To be witness, the friend, the judge, the accomplice. To record their moment. -Annie Leibovitz When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavoured to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer.-Julia Margaret Cameron Portraiture has always had a degree of propaganda about it. From the pre-photography days when portraits were the domain of the wealthy, they […]
Some photographs in Country doctor can be encountered on their own with each providing its own narrative- see examples below: