Contemporary Photographer Series - Sarah Hobbs

Escapism, 2009 © Sarah Hobbs

Sarah Hobbs was born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1970 and received a BFA in Art History and an MFA in Photography from the University of Georgia. Her work is held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, LACMA, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Knoxville Museum of Art. Her first book, Small Problems in Living, was published by Charta in 2012. She was recently interviewed by Alba Ciordia for our Contemporary Photographer Series (CPS).

Within your work you explore different psychological states like insomnia or paranoia. Where did your interest in these human conditions come from?

For many years I was drawn to photographing old and abandoned houses. Each one had a different feel to it and I ultimately realized that the feeling was a psychological one. It was coming from me as much as it was the space. The images of empty spaces eventually ran out of steam, but I could not shake the jolt I got from the psychological experience of being in these places. I started thinking about how I could make the feelings more specific and fill the space in an overwhelming way. I realized that by controlling the environment more I could create a space that holds a narrative. This led to me to research neuroses and phobias and to explore how they might manifest themselves in our lives.

Untitled (overcompensation), 2006 © Sarah Hobbs

All of your installations seem to exist in interior spaces, why do you choose to work there instead of outside?

While the outside world may be hinted at in the images, a person's solitude is very much implied. This illustrates the fact that solitude is a very personal state and mental space is a very personal space. Interior space accomplishes this much easier than the outdoors. One does not have to create a facade in their own space, so issues are free to expand and build. Outside there are more ways to escape, to shift perspective.

I have noticed that many of your pictures contain an empty chair. To me, this invites the viewer into the space so they can recreate their own emotions. This seems similar to the way you title your work, where you suggest a condition that the viewer can interpret. Do you see a connection between these two practices?

Absolutely. For me, it is ultimately the viewer who completes the work. I invite the viewer to participate in the image, to in a sense be the subject. How they experience the work depends on their own psyche. Each piece is a kind of self-test. 

The earlier pieces are untitled with a parenthetical title. That title is the jumping off point. I recognized very early on that there are other issues at work in the images beyond where I began, so I wanted the viewer to feel free to explore. In the later works, I stopped using Untitled not because my titles were no longer jumping off points, but because I want the viewer to be able to feel like a bystander or witness to what they are seeing in addition to feeling the subject.

Untitled (sensitivity), 2004 © Sarah Hobbs

In order to represent a psychological state I'm sure you need to carefully select the materials and spaces that you are going to use. How does this process work for you? Are there any behaviors that interested you that you weren't able to translate into successful images?

For quite a while in my practice I was deliberately picking a concept first. When I had lists of concepts, I would then allow myself to explore spaces and materials to illustrate them. As I have matured in my process, I have taken a more organic approach which has opened up many more possibilities. My process unfolds in many different ways. I carry my journal at all times. I write a lot. I try to be open to everything. The space or the materials may set the work in motion. Lately, with the installations, the place has come first. Place has in these instances become the concept. From there I begin accumulating or creating the materials that illustrate the idea.

There is a large bag of wedding cake toppers in my studio cabinet. I have worked on the concept of anuptaphobia (the fear of never getting married) from many different angles, but I haven't been able to make it work yet. Someday! I have lists upon lists of psychological issues that I revisit from time to time. Some of them work and some do not. There have been some ideas that I could not figure out for a photograph, but they worked perfectly as an installation (for example, the Germaphobe hotel room). There are some that I am going to be illustrating through video in the coming months.

Denial, 2008 © Sarah Hobbs

Yes, some of your installations are meant to be seen through photographs while others are experienced in person. What is the difference for you?

For several years people asked me, "why photographs instead of installations?" For most of my photographs, a domestic or private space is the setting. It is inherently tied to the concept. It does not really work to create a domestic space in a gallery or museum, as the knowledge that you are in a non-domestic space does not leave the viewer. A photograph shows the entirety of the space I want seen. The view of the personal space makes more sense in an image. Further, the viewer can imagine the rest of the space and the possibilities with that are endless.

After I completed three bodies of photographs, I took a little time to regroup. I found myself becoming more and more obsessed with the idea of creating spaces for viewers to experience in person. But a gallery setting still did not work. I needed space that was more personal. So I thought about the kinds of spaces that are public and private at the same time. 

Overpacked was an installation created in three hotel rooms. The rooms were presumably occupied and altered by people who had issues with being away from home and, therefore, their comfort zone. The viewer's experience of wandering into a hotel room someone else occupied, creating a voyeuristic feeling was part of the work. 

A storage facility was the location for Repository. Through four separate units, it examines the idea of how people can create a completely private and secret space for themselves apart from their home in order to house a compulsion, secret desire or difficult aspect of life they wish to hide. Wandering down the cold, long, brightly lit hallway and coming upon an open storage unit with strange and very secret items inside was integral to the installation.

detail - Homesick, 2012 © Sarah Hobbs