Elina Brotherus Femme à sa toilette

cm 80 x 66

From 1998, the year of her international debut, Elina Brotherus has alternated an autobiographical strategy capable of translating sentiments and emotions into a photographical language, with a heightened sensitivity to 19th century pictorial culture, and with explicit reference to the tradition that leads from Romanticism to post-Impressionist studies. Her work renews the dialogue between French and Nordic visual culture through a contemporary interpretation of the artist’s subjectivity. The biographical and documentary dimensions overlap and merge with the formal aspects, permitting the works to occupy a broad emotional spectrum that captures the spectator in a game of recognition and discovery, biographical confessions, and aesthetic citations. "Fille aux fleurs", "Le matin" and "Femme à sa toilette" are three self-portraits from "The new painting" series (2000-2004). The titles refer to the Impressionist painting tradition. However, the presence of Brotherus as the model in her shots, refers directly to documentary practice in the 1960s and 70s. The same necessity that had led Cindy Sherman to interpret film heroines in the series of the film, brought Elina Brotherus to see herself through the pictorial representation of the female figure. In "Femme à sa toilette", the photographer builds an image of herself that leaves space for new elements with respect to her previous works: the absence of her glance, the presence of her body and the disturbing black cable of the camera self-timer that exits from the bath tub.

No

E. Brotherus, Decisive Days, Neuilly-sur-Seine 2002; P. Colombo, M. Pignatti Morano, S. Vannini, S. Freddo, S. Borsato (eds.), Le Collezioni. Acquisizioni di arte contemporanea. MAXXI-Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, exhibition catalogue (Rome, MAXXI-Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo), Turin 2003, pp. 22-25; E. Brotherus, Elina Brotherus. The new painting, Carnets de résidences 2, Brussels 2004; S.A. Bankale (ed.), Elina Brotherus. The New Painting, exhibition catalogue (Helsinki, The Finnish Museum of Photography), London 2005.

Foto Elina Brotherus

Purchased from Galleria Sonath, Paris

Photography