Biography
Originally from Oslo Norway, Toril Brancher (b.1955) lives and works in South Wales. After graduating with a First Class Honours in documentary photography from University Wales Newport, she went on to gain an MA in photography also from UWN.
Current work includes the final stages of a commission from The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea, a video portrait of artist Glenys Cour, and documentation of the Art Factor-Portfolio sessions. Both works focus on visually recording the creative process as well as outcomes, using a mixture of still and moving images.
Toril’s work is in the collections of the V&A London and National Museum and Galleries of Wales Cardiff as well as private collections worldwide.
Toril is tutor on the photographing people course at Ffotogallery.
Portfolio
… but I picked flowers instead
"I have been working recently with the painter Glenys Cour, to make a video about her as a
painter. She is based in Mumbles, South Wales and at the time she was making abstract oil interpretations
inspired by a line from one of Vernon Watkins’ poems, Taliesin and The Mockers ‘ … I observed the designing
of flowers’.
During that time I had a terrible accident that made me deeply aware of
how closely we live with disaster and death in our everyday lives. Suddenly the flowers in my garden and
along the lanes where I live seemed more intensely enjoyable than ever. This started the process..."
Toril Brancher
Portfolio
That I Loved
‘That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is
derived, I maintain from the contemplation of the beautiful.‘ Edgar Alan Poe
So on a
good day I crawl around the garden, with my camera, looking for the meaning of life. I believe the making is
about capturing the present and hope the images become a preservation of that ‘has been’, whilst I am
contemplating beauty in the passing of time.
Toril Brancher
Portfolio
Face to Face
"A collaboration in every sense, this series was made over a period of two years when I asked
young people here to not only be the subject in these photographs, but to choose the very moment of their
image making. Location, background and pose we chose carefully together.
My intention
with the work was in part to challenge older people’s often negative, attitudes towards the younger
generation. On hearing this, the young people immediately straightened up, looked straight into the camera
in preparation to make the image."
Toril Brancer
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