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These images are the work in progress of my new collection ‘Pre’ Family Album. They are a response to my adoption documents. Each photograph’s title has been taken from statements written about me by officials dealing with the adoption case. It is titled ‘Pre’ Family album to illustrate the passage of time when I belonged to no family at all. The images are visuals that I have created to accompany the words heard in court as my adoption was read out and I was placed for the first time with my ‘family’. The prints are an exchange of thoughts and interpretation of my emotions as the officials were making decisions of my future. These decisions were made in court about me. I was not present. My birth parents were not present. My adoptive parents were not present. It was a hearing in court when a decision was made for me. My images are representations of the time I was given up by my natural mother to the time I was given my adoptive parents – When I became part of a family. The images were created as an emotional response to a court hearing.
Bruna Martini is a multimedia artist who investigates the boundaries between film, photography and cultural artifacts taken from everyday life.
In ‘The Tyranny of Beauty’, Bruna critiques the model of female beauty imposed by society through the mass media. The prevailing idea that the female body can be improved to perfection transforms women into commodities. To critique the current representation of women in our society, Bruna photographed advertisements in public spaces and collected women’s magazine covers published worldwide in 2011. By bringing together cultural artifacts that are taken from everyday life, her project draws attention to the quantity of glossy bodies, the under- representation of ethnic minorities and the reification of the female form.
Bruna’s film and photographic work is available at www.martinib.eu
Her charity and commercial video work is available at www.bokocreative.co.uk
bruna@martinib.eu
A Space Within: Triptych
In the world I envision, everything is engaged in constant change, thus everything is fluid. The work is meant to be seen as a triptych, where the images are arranged sequentially. They inform each other and merge to form ‘imaginary’ landscapes drawn by the backs of the horses. For me, this landscapes become symbolic images of natural rhythms. I would like to hint at the fact that everything is interconnected and thus interdependent. I am aiming for a meditative atmosphere, where the viewer is engaged in an experience of pure discovery and contemplation. The interplay of light and shadows is a constant concern. Shadows shape the light and are shaped by it at the same time. The work is infused, I should hope, with a sense of open meaning: it is a metaphor for transformation.
 
This body of work looks at how memory recall produces imperfect representations. Over time, exact memories of the past fade, become distorted, reinterpreted and displaced. My photographs are intended to demonstrate transference of meaning and the amalgamation of several true or forgotten events which our minds both store and attempt to retrieve.
By establishing a contrast between the intended meaning of the image and the veiled implications, the boundaries between reality and fantasy merge. I create surreal, reconstructed images which are intended not only to recall moments of personal significance but to create a new condensed memory that has evolved from a past experience.
 
‘The family album is the memory keeper; the precious object that gives validity to all of the happy holidays, birthdays, and graduations. Proof that they happened. But what about the unrecorded events? Where do those memories go?
I have been looking critically at my relationship to photographs of my mother in order to address my experiences as her daughter and the memories that each image invokes. I am attempting to remember what is not depicted in our family album, recreating my own version of events in the making of a new photograph, which could be termed a mirrored response; I sit before the camera with my mother’s photograph staring directly at me, I return the gaze and am newly enabled to react, no longer as a child, but as an empowered adult’.
Education
2012 – MA – Photography, London Metropolitan University
2011 – BFA – Photography, California State University Long Beach
Solo Exhibitions
2005 Travels, Margaret Clarke Gallery, Redlands, CA
2010 Color Prints, Porter Gallery, Long Beach, CA
Group Exhibitions
2007 Black and White, Arena 1 Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2011 Picture This, C.S.U.L.B Gatov Gallery, Long Beach, CA
2012 Work in Progress, London Metropolitan University, London, UK
2012 MA Show, MA Show The Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design
Thirteen London-based photographic artists present exciting new work in this Photomonth 2012 exhibition. With members of the group coming from countries as diverse as the USA, Iran, UK, Romania and New Zealand, the show promises a wide cultural perspective.
The subjects addressed extend from the extremely intimate to the profoundly public, whilst always reflecting a contemporary view.
Wednesday 7th November 2012 – Sunday 11th November 2012
Opening Times:
Wed – Sat, 11-9; Sun 11-5
Private View Tuesday 6th November 6pm-9pm
Apricot Gallery
The Rag factory
16-18 Heneage Street, London,
E1 5LJ
Artists
Héloïse Bergman
Elizabeth Bicher
Parastoo Ebneali
Bego García
Jane Garfield
Bruna Martini
Lauren Mashford
Saman Partovi
Paul Robinson
Elena Sarghiuta
Geoff Titley
Fotis Variatzas
Elaine Verrier
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