Sights-of-Interest: Denial of Danger in Living Spaces

Exploring the illusion of protection, I constructed a fiber-based installation to recreate the experience of photographing outside and inside living spaces. This body of work is about the allure of the photographic experience. It is about the experience of seeing, noticing, and thinking that occurs while looking through the camera’s viewfinder. It is about unconsciously ignoring the physical dangers that live in the picturesque land photographed. In response, I created a two room installation. Two household living rooms are staged as conceptual “living spaces.” One room simulates a damp swamp floor; and the other, the interior of a warm-blooded body. Because the living room is a semi-public/private space, the uncertainty of visual invitation is instigated through the fabrication and manipulation of second-hand, domestic materials. The familiar receptivity of seating, tables, and rugs, found in both installations has been re-contextualized into vibrant objects of experience. The scope of this project questions the allure of photographic experience by examining life and death through the idea of the “optical orgasm” and the “optical snatch.