Anthea Behm works across media with a focus on photography, video and performance. The ongoing series of photograms is part of Behm’s exploration into the legacies of modernism, the tension between abstraction and representation, and the ways in which social realities are embedded within formal concerns. Currently, her work deals with the politics of form, especially as it relates to feminist concerns about power and bodies. Pictorial photographs appropriating female figures by modern photographers such as Edward Weston and Man Ray are incorporated in these works, calling into question how use of the female body has been historically justified through formal investigations. Through using images of modern ‚masters', Behm seeks to complicate photography’s historical relationship to reality and question the power relations inherent (yet hidden) in its production and reception. Behm works through a kind of conceptual materialism that engages lost elements of imagination and production to show the potentials that have been suppressed and draws out the connections between material forms and social content that have been obscured by dominant narratives and conventional processes.
