Elina Brotherus
The Human Perspective
“I have this distant relationship to this person in the work, but also, I’m a little bit amused to see her.” The human body is the focus of the work by the acclaimed Finnish photographer Elina Brotherus, who uses herself as material. She here presents two video works describing the passing of time reflecting her own life situation.
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Brotherus (b. 1972) talks about her work and why she uses herself in her own work. How she was shocked when as a student she saw her first self portrait and it didn’t correspond with her own image of what she looked like. How she today is used to seeing her own portrait. She says she is very interested in the passing of time because of ageing and the fact that she – being a woman at forty – finds herself in an irreversible situation. Brotherus also presents two video works: ‘The Miroir’ from 2001, which shows Brotherus in a bathroom looking into the mirror while the steam disappears from the picture, and ‘The Black Bay Sequence’ from 2010, which shows the same sequence where Brotherus swims in a lake filmed from the same video angle during a period of three months.The human figure gives the scale and the human perspective to the landscape, it is like a screen you can project your self into, Brotherus says.
Elina Brotherus was interviewed by Christian Lund in November 2012.
Camera: Martin Kogi and Jonas Jørgensen
Edited by: Kamilla Bruus and Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2012
Supported by Nordea-fonden