“Esther Teichmann’s watery, slippery world of another order is also taboo. In Silently Mirrored, the viewer slips and slides between photographs of the exuberance of her husband’s black skin (so dark that it hails deep sea blue) and photographs of the exuberance of her mother’s white skin (so white that it hails sky blue). In Teichmann’s black (body) and blue (washcloth) landscape of touching feelings, made of breath, water and skin, one is bruised (black and blue) by naked love.”

Carol Mavor Love in Black and Blue

In her large-scale photographic works and video pieces Esther Teichmann examines the relationship of the self to the maternal body and to the body of the lover. Desire and fear of loss are subtly and yet powerfully evoked in these explorations of the visceral and expressive properties of the human physique and skin. The title of her recent series, Stillend Gespiegelt, articulates this duality. German stillend can be variously translated as breastfeeding, quieting or comforting, while gespiegelt means mirrored. This word-diptych suggests the physical stillness of both mother and child in the act of nursing, as well as the physical proximity of the two lovers comforting each other. Within the parameters of the medium, these works draw attention to the status of the photographic image as a moment of stillness, not unlike a mother quieting her infant. While in the act of mirroring, every photograph becomes an invitation for self-reflection.

Teichmann’s work is autobiographical in that she chooses for her subjects the members of her immediate family. In her works their (often naked) bodies are almost close enough to touch, yet are held at a distance by the inherent aspects of the photographic medium. Like the mother’s skin, seen by the infant as fragmented surface, and like the lover’s skin too close to focus upon, so the image demands that the spectators negotiate their relationship to it.