ELINA BROTHERUS

(born 29 April 1972) is a Finnish photographer and video artist specializing in self-portraits and landscapes. Elina Brotherus. (2016)

Brotherus project Annunciation is about the hope and heartache of the fertility treatment she was undergoing, and which she has documented through her photographs, displaying the emotions felt as time and time again there was hope and then was found to be unsuccessful. Relating back to part 2 she illustrates the unseen elements of time through the extracts of a year on page calendars (2008-12) and her changing haircut and style. The final images indicate she has given up hope and this is the end.

Another of her series available here is, Model Studies, in which she gives her insight into the role of the subjects’ gaze in self-portraiture, where again she is the model. Out of the all the images we can only see her eyes directly in one, however, she is still able to communicate to and direct the viewer.

Both these project are very different; Annunciation is highly a personal work and her nakedness implies fragility and closeness to the biological reality of the reasons behind IVF treatment she was undergoing. Model Studies is different it not as personal and she seems to be using nudity as the simplest form of the subject. However, why is she using this nudity to “invite quiet contemplation” perhaps it is to illustrate that we almost expect female nudity in pictures and therefore she challenging us to look past to nudity to the reasons why the images were taken.

Annunciation stands on it own without text, although it has accompanying text, you can see that this about a woman fight to become pregnant. However, Model studies the intention is less obvious and it has limited accompanying text allowing in Bartherian term the viewer to draw their own conclusions.

References

En.wikipedia.org. (n.d.). Elina Brotherus. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elina_Brotherus [Accessed 14 Aug. 2018].

Elina Brotherus. (n.d.). Photography. [online] Available at: http://www.elinabrotherus.com/photography [Accessed 14 Aug. 2018].