I was recommended to look at Esther Teichmann by Lucy Levenne in my 1 on 1 tutorial on 8.10.12. She takes photographs of her family including her Mother her Father and her Husband. My project is focusing on breast cancer because of my experiences and my Mothers experiences with breast cancer during my last year of A-Levels and my first year of University.
“[ Esther’s work centres around colours, echoes and emo- tional response. Much of her photography and moving image explores the relationship between the self and the body, flesh and mortality. She has always been fascinat- ed by the space between desiring and loving a person and being in love with the image, fantasy, projection of them. This difference between the fiction and the reality intrigues her and is present in both her fashion and art work. ]
Esther has recently completed her PhD at the RCA and made a short piece, In Search of Lightning, with a voice- over narrative that she has written. Drinking Air, pub- lished in 2011 as a limited edition interweaves several bodies of her work spanning the last six years, punctured by fragments of prose. Recent features have included an interview with 10 magazine by Skye Sherwin; an essay by Carol Mavor in Photographies, which concludes with an image from Mythologies and narrative based on the image; 100 New Artists edited by Francesca Gavin and published by Laurence King; and works included in Carol Mavor’s upcoming 2012 publications with Duke University Press and Reaktion Books. The next issue of Foam magazine includes new works alongside conversa- tion by Aaron Schuman and Charlotte Cotton.
Esther Teichmann was born in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1980. In 2005 she was listed in Art Review’s top 25 new artists and Creative Review’s Creative Futures, the year she received her MA in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art. Esther lectures widely; she lives and works in London.
Esther’s work has been exhibited and published inter- nationally, with group and solo shows in London, Los Angeles, Berlin, Mannheim, Modena and Melbourne. Clients include AnOther Magazine, Attitude, Dazed & Confused, Centrefold, Qvest, Swarovski and Topman.
http://www.webberrepresents.com/artists/esther_ teichmann”
Taken from: http://www.shanelavalette.com/journal/2008/07/30/esther-teichmann-an-impossible-place/ (Accessed May 2012)
Above is one of the photographs which shows her passion for colours, as in most of her images starring her mother her mother is looking away from the camera. Visually this photograph is not relevant to the kind of photographs that I want to produce but theoretically it is. The ideas that she portrays are intriguing to me, her mother looking away in the photographs show a distance and a struggle in the relationship between her and her mother. When my mother got breast cancer our relationship completely changed. Instead of her looking after me, I was looking after her and became the parental figure in our relationship.
“Loss and the Art Object This research project explores the relationship between loss and the production of the art object through both textual and visual works. The relationship between the fear of loss and the need to create, is one which is mirrored in the drive and desire reflected in an artist’s relationship to his/her work. It is the parallels between these relationships and the inevitably linked perception the artist has to reality and the alter worlds created, which I am examining, looking at the first experiences of the imaginary and desire linked for example to the maternal body, which mirror and determine our later perception of reality and fantasy and our relationship to the fear of loss.
“Teichmann’s utopian island-world lies somewhere between black and blue seas, between here and now and the fantasy of where one might go, or perhaps, even, where one has been. At the heart of the work is the experience of the primal loss of the mother, who necessarily turns away, as Teichmann’s mother does in some of the photograph.”
(Carol Mavor Love in Black and Blue)
http://folio.rca.ac.uk/user/view.php?id=769
The idea that the artist is caught between the fear of loss and the need to create is something that I feel I can connect quite strongly with. The fear of losing my mother is something I want to use as inspiration. I want to make something good from the terrible thing that affected my family and affects so many families like mine.
Ideas of loss and an impossible return, of grief and a sense of inherited home- sickness, are themes drawn upon repeatedly throughout my practice (from an early body of work, “Viscosity”, to the current work in progress pieces within “Mythologies”, whether bodies are submerged within thick viscous liquid, cloaked by an impenetrable darkness, or whether they float within wondrous dislocated landscapes, turned away). Central to the work lies an exploration of the origins of fantasy and desire and how these are bound to experiences of loss and representation.
“Drawing upon a range of references and source material, from Orientalist paintings to literature, “Mythologies” looks at the fantasy of the maternal life and that of the lover before we entered theirs, playing with ideas of an impossible return to a fictionalized, possibly primordial, imagined place.”
http://folio.rca.ac.uk/user/view.php?id=769
Taken from: http://forums.thefashionspot.com/f127/eugen-bauder-28376-7.html (Accessed May 2012)
These images are also by Esther Teichmann as part of her commissioned work. These are not theoretically relevant or inspirational but the poses and facial expressions are good inspiration and will help me when taking photographs. I have never been good at portraiture as
I am not good at directing people in a way that makes them look natural or interesting.
These photographs convey such emotion and feeling which is something that I will need to do well in order to communicate the stories of these women. One of the major concerns with my project that has come up in all of my tutorials is that without showing the scars it may be difficult to convey the stories and emotional upheaval that these women have been through.
One way to get around this issue is to Photoshop the stories over the photographs of the women however this could detract from the photographs instead of enhancing them.
All images taken from – 
Suicidal Pigeons 
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