Elina Brotherus -

Elina Brotherus

"Photography reflects reality not through what it shows but through the tension between what it shows and what it is"

Most of Brotherus' work is largely conceptual. She works within what she calls "themes and variations" ("The New Painting," for example), but tries to split theme up with photographs of a different theme so as not to seem too monotonous. Each theme has it's own concept behind it.

Self Portraits

False Memories II
From the series "Das Madchen sprach von Liebe" (The girl spoke of Love)

In the beginning of her career, Brotherus tried to express through her photographs her personal experiences in a way that is universal and can be felt by everyone. In her work the emotion is staged, but we know it is staged. We begin to explore our emotions by exploring the relationship between what happens in real life and what is acted out in the photograph.
Without meaning to, she mostly focused on dark emotions. Photography helped her explore and consequently get over these emotions.

Love Bites I

Love Bites III
Brotherus thought that by capturing her emotions in what was going on in her everyday life that other people would relate. She is interested in the fact that humans all go through the same intense emotions in life.

Suites françaises 2

At this point Brotherus began to leave the autobiographical style for something a little less personal. Suites francaises 2 was inspired by something Brotherus was going through (having to learn a new language), but extended further than just her experiences to a broader theme. These photographs represent feelings of being an outsider. She also addresses the issue of communication and the human habit of putting names to everything.

Happy at last?

In this image we get a sense that Brotherus is confined by the limits of her ability to speak the language. She is even confined to defining herself by the one thing she knows how to say about herself.

This image is similar to the last in the feeling of confinement. There are a lot of things in the image but only a couple of words that can be used to describe what is going on. It is also significant that one of the sticky notes is covering her face. Again, she is saying that, to the outside world, she is only as much as she can convey to others about herself.

The New Painting

Her most recent work is almost devoid of anything personal to her. She has started to explore what a photograph really is and if it can really reflect on life. One of these series is called "The New Painting." The images in this series are meant to relate to famous paintings. She tries express that simple life has always been a subject of art because it is beautiful.

Personnage dans un paysage

This photograph is modeled after Paul Cezanne's "Bathers." Everything about the photo (from the color scheme to the subject matter) is very simple, yet altogether the photo draws strong emotions of tranquility. Brotherus is always concerned with classical elements of light, color, composition, and representation of the human figure, but she uses these as tools to express the concepts behind her work.

Femme Dans A Baignoire
modeled after Pierre Bonnard's "Bathrooms"

Baigneuse, Orage Montant
modeled after the goddess Venus

Model Studies

Like stated before, Brotherus is very interested in the classical elements that make up a photograph. Recently she has focused on the human figure and the interaction of a human figure with it's surroundings, how the lighting changes it, and how it can be interpreted in many different ways. She has devoted a series to the study of these elements.

Model Study 15

The colors, lines, and lighting all work together with the shape of the body in this image to give a natural and organic feel to the photograph. It focuses on the ability for a body to be beautiful purely from an aesthetic point of view. There is no objectifying of the body, instead we are forced to focus on color, texture, shape, and line of the form showing that the body can be a piece of artwork. She purposely took this from an odd angle because she did not want it to be a portrait.

Model Study 5

Again, this photo is more about how the body fits in the environment rather than it being an actual portrait of a particular person. I think that Brotherus did an amazing job matching the lighting on the skin to the tones in the rest of the room. Instead of taking emotion directly from what the subject is feeling, we get the emotion from the cues we can read in the artistic elements used in the photo.