General Entry - Emerging Talent Awards

Intimate Spaces: The Bedroom Project We can spend many hours, days, even weekends in the homes of friends and relatives without ever seeing their bedrooms where fully a third of one’s life is lived. For The Bedroom Project, I ask friends, relatives, and acquaintances for permission to photograph their bedrooms, bringing their private space into public view. I create intimate portraits of the couples and individuals through their private sanctuaries, where secrets are shared and dreams are dreamt. I was curious if their beds and décor would reflect the people as I know them, or if I would learn anything new about them. I became aware of items in the bedrooms that have deep meaning for the individual and tell a personal story. Even the short amount of time I spent in these private rooms left me with a better understanding of the individual. Believing that art lives in the space between the viewer’s eye and the artwork itself, I like to imagine that the viewer creates inhabitants who will become an inherent part of the picture and fill the bedrooms with life. I wonder how these imagined people reflect aspects and personalities of the actual people who, in fact, live/lived in each particular bedroom.