Laura Pannack and Esther Teichmann in conversation: Emotional image making

(c) Laura Pannack, Courtesy of the Artist

 

08th May 2024

Laura Pannack and Esther Teichmann will join us in dialogue discussing their practices and how their work addresses intimacy and emotional intensity. They will exchange thoughts on their writing, production and concepts behind their work and their journey since first meeting 18 years ago.

Speakers

 

Laura Pannack is a London based photographic artist. (b1985). Renowned for her portraiture and social documentary work, she seeks to explore the complex relationship between sitter and photographer. Many of the projects focus on youth and time. She fuses her passion for psychology and creativity and often collaborates with a range of practitioners. She believes in a process built on a shared experience. Using the camera as a bridge Laura curiously ventures into the process with limitless expectations with those she photographs, searching for engagement, connection and a unique experience. Her work has been extensively exhibited and published worldwide, including at The National Portrait Gallery, The Houses of Parliament, Somerset House, and the Royal Festival Hall in London.

Over the past 15 years her artwork has received much acclaim and won numerous awards, among which are the John Kobal Award, Vic Odden prize, World Photo Press Awards, Juliet Margaret Cameron award, The Sony World photo awards, the HSBC Prix de la Photographie prize and the Camera Clara Prize. Laura aims to dig beneath the surface and shift beyond what we think we see. She is driven by research led, self-initiated projects that push her to grow both as an artist and as an individual. Many of her projects span over several years allowing the narrative to arise with the development. Largely shooting on analogue film allows her process to be organic rather than being predefined by fixed ideas, introducing chance and fate.

“The work aims to tell and inspire stories. My aim is to connect and emotionally engage with a viewer. I want you to look at my images and see your own story too.”

 

Esther Teichmann‘s practice moves across still and moving image, collage and painting, creating alternate worlds, which blur autobiography and fiction. 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. Our relationship to otherness, the maternal, home, inherited grief, female pleasure and the act of looking and being looked at, are themes which are returned to through a layering of voices and visual approaches. Thinking about our bodies as sites of knowledge production, Teichmann reimagines space and encounters through feminist subjectivity, exploring the relationship between fiction, myth and lived experience.

Solo museum shows include Heavy the Sea, Transformer Station, Cleveland Museum of Art, USA and Mondschwimmen, Reiss-Engelhorn Museum, Mannheim, Germany. Collaborations include Phantasie Fotostudio with Monster Chetwynd at John Hansard Gallery, the co-curation and editing of the exhibition and book, Staging Disorder, with artist Christopher Stewart with whom she also created the Wellcome Trust funded film and research project, Constellations. Her work is held in public and private collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Esther is represented by Flowers Gallery (London, New York, Hong Kong). Teichmann received an MA and PhD in Photography from the Royal College of Art (RCA) and is Head of Programme of the Master of Research at the RCA.