Thinking About Photography
Dedicated to expanding our ideas about photography
Jessica Burko
©Jessica Burko, Fractured And Found installation, 2022
Fractured and Found
My work in the ongoing series, Fractured and Found, combines photography and encaustic medium inside reclaimed wooden drawers that are pieced into towering and teetering structures. The image transfers are largely fragmented self-portraits and their connection to areas of empty space suggest a disjointed existence. Through the juxtaposition and isolated compartments of broken moments and emptiness there appears to be room for breath, for rest, or intervals yet to be filled.
©Jessica Burko, ShortFuse, 2022
©Jessica Burko, Installation detail WithYield, 2018
The path I travel in making the work explores connections between interior being and being on display, creating emotional divisiveness while in demand by conflicting forces. Searching for balance between selfhood, motherhood, working, and rest, every role becomes compartmentalized, fitting into one another as a modular ever-changing form.
©Jessica Burko, Say It, 2022
Incorporating found materials helps me feel grounded in what’s real and what exists outside of my head. The drawers symbolize not just boxes I’m trying to fit into, but also spaces once private, now revealed and put on display. Much of my work grows out of the battle between yearning for one thing but doing something else. The images and constructions combine with disjointed awkwardness, and through making the images and structures I traverse complex feelings while struggling to find place, meaning, purpose, and time.
©Jessica Burko, How Do You Really Feel, 2022
©Jessica Burko, Fractured and Found, installation