Experienced visual artist and teaching professional who holds a PhD from Glasgow School of Art. Highly creative and ambitious teaching approach, administration and publication experience combined with a fine art practice-led photographic research practice that is specialised in analogue photography and archiving.
PhD Academic Summary
In my PhD research, Beyond The Photograph (2015-2019), I interrogate a specific power of family photographs. I hypothesise that family photographs can point beyond themselves. That beyond their visual representational surface they hold silenced, private content that can’t assimilate to official archives. Such content offsets the ideologically determined collective discourse; if excavated act as counter-memory and archive. I triangulate between fields of fine art, humanities and social sciences with methodologies of photography theory, archiving, autoethnography, oral history and philosophy. Through the theoretical and methodological foundations set by Marianne Hirsch, Annette Kuhn and Martha Langford, I devised an excavation strategy. The collaborative and performative fine art photography research practice, enabled me to took up an emotionally proximal position to the participating storytellers, from which I detect, elevate and embed content into the critical discourse. The research output is a unique drawer system – that encompasses the written critical and the visual component of the research journey such as photobooks, visualisation maps and participatory objects.
Education & Qualifications
2015 – 2019 PhD Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow UK
Supervisors: Dr Nicky Bird and Dr Frances Robertson
2016 – Pg Cert Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow UK
Learning and Teaching in Creative Disciplines, on going
2011 – 2012 MRes in Creative Practices Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow UK
2008 – 2011 BA(Hons) Fine Art Photography Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow UK
Student Exchange (2009) San Francisco Art Institute, USA
2006 – 2008 Applied Photographer, OKJ – HND Novus, Budapest Hungary
2004 – 2006 Photographer, OKJ – HND Trade School, Budapest, Hungary
Photobooks
Biró, E. 2015. RecipeBook. Association of Hungarian Photographers, Budapest. ISBN 978-963-12-3203-5
Biró, E. 2014. Ágnes. in series Fragments. Self Published, Budapest.
Biró, E. 2014. Edit. in series Fragments. Self Published, Budapest.
Biró, E. 2014. Ibolya. in series Fragments. Self Published, Budapest.
Biró, E. 2014. Julika. in series Fragments. Self Published, Budapest.
Biró, E. 2014. Zsóka. in series Fragments. Self Published, Budapest.
Fragments won the inaugural,Hungarian National Museum’s, Rosti Pál Photobook Award, 2020.
Biró, E. 2015. Les Fleurs du Mal. Self Published, Budapest.
Biró, E. 2012. Confabulations on my Imaginary Family Album I-II. Self-published, Glasgow.
Mack First Book Award Nominated by Hungarian National Museum
Prizes, Grants:
2020 Rosti Pál Photobook Award, Hungarian National Museum
2019 Hungarian State Eötvös Pre-doctorial Scholarship, 6 months
2017 – 2018 Thomas and Margaret Roddan Trust Scholarship, two semesters
2013 – 2015 Pécsi József Photography Grant, 3 years
Shortlisted:
2022 Silenced Public Art Price
2020 Rosti Pál Photobook Award
2019 Source Magazine, Review
2012 Royal Scottish Academy New Contemporaries
2011 GSA Chairman Award
2011 Photoworks – Showcase selection
2011 Source Magazine – graduate portfolio selected by Susan Bright
Eszter Biró 