Identity - Memory - Eva Stenram

by Morgan

Eva Stenram, originally from Sweden, is a London based artist who creates work by digitally cutting up existing images, primarily from vintage pornography and erotica. Her work has been featured in magazines such as Aperture, W, and Esquire.

When first looking at Stenram's work, I was very curious as to why she would fall into the category of memory, as I wasn't hit with that feeling when just simply viewing her work. She has a body of work in progress since 2004 called pornography/forest_pics, but by simply viewing these images I was even more lost. 

pornography/forest_pic_1

Her website is very simple, clean, and has minimal information visible when viewing images, but after clicking through a handful of these images, I realized there was a "more information" link. That's when the artist statement swooped in and saved the day. 

http://www.evastenram.co.uk/pages/mum-11.htm

"pornography/forest-pics is a series based on hardcore pornographic images that are set within or around forests. The pictures were found on the Internet and downloaded, after which the human bodies were digitally removed. The bodies are digitally removed from each shot by copying and repeating the surrounding landscape, creating visual scars within the image. Our gaze is redirected to the overlooked part of the image. The viewer is left to to complete the scene imaginatively. The photographs, once denuded of their ‘action’, also bring to mind police forensic photography, as though these were the sites of forbidding, if unnamed, events. The forest setting complements this ambiguity: at once a place of beauty and danger, of obscuring and clearing, a public as well as a private space. Its quasi-repetition throughout the series both reproduces the banality of porn itself and elaborates a typography of spaces. The human bodies in many cases gets replaced by the ground, become earth, dust and debris."

Knowing now what this work really is, I'm so much more intrigued. It's a take on the idea of memory I wouldn't have thought of myself. She removes the central focus of these images, and even though we don't ever see the original images, we're left to wonder what was once there. Although I don't find most of these images hold my interest on their own, having the information about the work makes me love the work. I'm always blown away by the ideas other artists create.