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How do these images make you feel?
I experienced a different set of emotions for each of the works I investigated on.
I already wrote about Francesca Woodman in the Research Point.
Elina Brotherus's Annunciation made me feel sad for her. The body of work is intimate and extremely open.
However, being a father, I believe I cannot fully get all the messages she aimed to send to the viewer and I do not dare to judge if, in her place, I would have exposed myself in this way. But I respect the decision, and, over all the entire work, because I believe it is real, vivid and credible.
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| (Elina Brotherus, from the series Annonciation (2009-2013), http://www.elinabrotherus.com/annonciation/8h7hxh8krvt02wh0whe33bdkkblc2m, accessed on 10/12/2017) |
However, being a father, I believe I cannot fully get all the messages she aimed to send to the viewer and I do not dare to judge if, in her place, I would have exposed myself in this way. But I respect the decision, and, over all the entire work, because I believe it is real, vivid and credible.
While I was researching on the series 'Annonciation', I took the chance to have a look to other series. Among them 'Model Studies'. It arises the confirmation of a autobiographic style.
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| (Elina Brotherus, from the series Model Studies (2002-2008), http://www.elinabrotherus.com/model-studies/ksjclyw278l054uljevrgww3eebrqf, accessed on 10/12/2017) |
I do not feel comfortable with Gillian Wearing's work. First of all because I see more fiction than autobiography. The technicality is exemplary (she got help by experts of Madame Tussauds). As I do not like masks and carnival, and maybe my feelings are obstructed. I honestly believe that Wearing's work is a research of her identity using her family identity, so I could argue that the feeling I could have is loneliness. I believe that this work has more to do with the Project 2 chapter, were they talk about "Masquerades" and state that "....photography is not necessarily a true depiction of who we are..."(OCA, Context & Narrative, 2017 Edition, page 76).
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| (Gillian Wearing,'Self Portrait as My Sister Jane Wearing' https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wearing-self-portrait-as-my-sister-jane-wearing-p81099 accessed on 11/12/2017) |
Do you think there's an element of narcissism or self-indulgence in the focusing on you own identity in this way?
I do not think there are self-indulgence or narcissism in self-portraits by Woodman or Brotherus or Wearing (after all, are Weraing's self portarits real self-portraits?).
Indeed all the three artists, in different contexts and ways, send messages of themselves to the viewer, and I believe this was their intent.
Is the statement ".....I am always available..." by Woodman an element of narcissism? I do not think so.
What's the significance of Brotherus's nakedness?
I did a research on self-portrait and nakedness and found out that in 1908 Katharina Behrend placed her camera in a room of her house in Hannover and portraited herself naked.
This could have been the first naked female self-portrait in photography. Her collection can be found in Nederlands Fotomusueum in Rotterdam.
This image was related to the the attempt, by Behrend, of getting out of the stereotype of the photograph as a document: it was an exploration in order to self-describe, represent herself and define her place in the world.
This work by Katharina Behrend was seen as the real start of "female photography", feminist from a certain point of view.
On the contrary the significance of Elina Brotherus's nakedness, in my opinion, is related to the subject that she is highlighting in the series "Annonciation". In this work nakedness is associated with sadness, weakness, failing, but even with the need of openly expose the nudity as the truth stripped of all frills and masks: the announced truth is the involuntary childless and IVF leading to nowhere.
Can such images 'work' for an outsider without accompanying text?
The main debate on Francesca Woodman's work was about the real meaning of her images. Whether they were about sadness, loneliness, troubles in her mind, suicide anticipation or just her narrative about herself.
She left no message before her suicide, so everybody is investigating if her images could be the real message.
However some images have accompanying text and we can even find some irony in them (i.e. "It must be time for lunch, of 1979).
Elina Brotherus's Annonciation, together with her coming-out about her failed research of maternity, work without any further accompanying text. All images have explicit content and arranged sequence, so that any outsider can easily follow her narrative.
Gillian Wearing's Album is not a story: therefore it needs a caption or an anchor so that any outsider can fully understand who is in the portrait.
Do you think any of the artists are also addressing wider issues beyond the purely personal?
I agree with Francesca Woodman's father George, who once declared that, despite her daughter lived an historic period were feminism was "in the air", she was not feminist at all.
I believe in this statement because, as I wrote before, I believe that self-portraiting was the main part of Woodman's narrative and that she was adding the issue of identity versus time, of being and disappearing.
But, I repeat, once she declared that her self-portraiting was a matter of convenience, because she was always available.
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| (OCA, Context & Narrative, 2017 Edition, page 76) |
I think that this declaration by Elina Brotherus clearly addresses the issue of all the women who are (she thinks) deluded by easy promises and by failed treatments like IFV.
