The photographs of Sarah Jones address established pictorial genres and
our associated expectations by paring back space, subject and gesture.
This book--the first major monograph on this young British
artist--brings together work from an 18-year period, including many
photographs never previously published, and looks at the themes and
concerns that have remained constants in her work. The sequence of
images chosen and arranged by the artist specifically for this
publication is informed by Jones' interest in how we see and represent
her chosen subjects, using tropes from the stereograph, the double, the
still life and portraiture. Jones first gained notice in the late 1990s
for her photographs taken in psychoanalysts' consulting rooms. These
provocative sites have been explored through her practice over the
years, in particular the couches that, in Jones's images, show visible
signs of the imprint of the patients who had reclined upon them during
consultation. Her well-known later studies of adolescent girls
uncomfortably caught in the flash of the camera in domestic settings
draw attention to the staged relationship between model, photographer
and location. Recent diptychs of horses and rose bushes refer to the
viewing of early stereographic prints and explore the potential for
photography to reveal uncanny perspectives on a subject. In The Rose
Gardens series, Jones photographs the front and back of rose bushes in
public gardens so that viewers can contemplate both viewpoints
simultaneously. Jones' overarching imperative is to look at subjects
stripped back to an emotional truth. The imprints on the couches, the
view of the roses that are beginning to wilt and the glazed look in the
eyes of her models all investigate ideas of beauty and ritualized
everyday gesture.
