Geska Helena Brečević

Geska Helena Brečević is an artist and independent researcher working mainly in Sweden, Mexico and Croatia. In 2004, she and Robert Brečević formed Performing Pictures (www.performingpictures.art). Together they make film and video installations that blur the lines between still and motion media. Their work, supported by numerous national and international grants, has resulted in more than 20 solo and 50 group shows as well as commissions for several permanent public art installations. Her artistic research has been carried out with the support of The National Arts Grants Committee, the Royal Institute of Arts and the National Swedish Research Committee. Geska is currently the artistic director of the Film Capital Stockholm’s project Smart Kreativ Stad (www.smartkreativstad.com) investigating new perspectives on moving images in the public space.

Geska Helena Brečević: geska@performingpictures.se, Performing Pictures, Sweden

Article

More Than a Portrait

Framing the Photograph as Sculpture and Video Animation

Geska Helena Brečević, Karin Becker

Vol. 3, no. 2
2018
Online: June 5, 2020

Reading time: 20 minutes

All the more shall this become a memory of the time you and your mother stood on a countryside road amid the agave fields and with the mountain range of Oaxaca in the background on one of countless journeys...

Abstract

This essay traces the resurrection of the fotoescultura, a three-dimensional photographic portrait popular in rural Mexico in the early 20th century, as interpreted in recent works by Performing Pictures, a contemporary Swedish artist duo. The early fotoesculturas were an augmented form of portraiture, commissioned by family members who supplied photographs that artisans in Mexico City converted into framed sculptural portraits for display on family altars. We compare these »traditional« photographic objects with “new” digital forms of video animation on screen and in the public space that characterize Performing Pictures work, and explore how the fotoescultura inspired new incarnations of their series Men that Fall. At the intersection between the material aspects of a “traditional” vernacular art form and “new” media art, we identify a photographic aesthetic that shifts from seeing and perceiving to physical engagement, and discuss how the frame and its parergon augment the photographic gaze. The essay is accompanied by photos and video stills from Performing Pictures’ film poem Dreaming the Memories of Now (2018), depicting their work with the fotoesculturas.

Keywords: fotoesculturas, frame, parergon, vernacular photography, videoart

Karin Becker is professor emerita of media studies at Stockholm University. Originally based in the US, her early research focused on documentary photography and photojournalism in the US and its European influences. She has investigated a broad range of visual media forms and practices, and has led major research projects on global media events and art installations as mediated through the public space. Visual ethnography has been central to her methodological approach. Since 2008, her research has included an ongoing study of Performing Pictures’ work in Sweden and southern Mexico. Becker is currently engaged in the research project Screening Protest (www.screeningprotest.com), where she is analysing the visual coverage of protests as mediated in transnational television news broadcasts.

Karin Becker: karin.becker@ims.su.se, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden

Geska Helena Brečević: geska@performingpictures.se, Performing Pictures, Sweden

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Journal of Photography

Journal of Photography