Another Room by Haley Jane Samuelson

Issue 20

I am both the casualty and consequence of many dichotomies. I remain whole, and yet I am simultaneously divided, torn between the very things that bind me: Between the reality of adulthood and the image of it; between my need to grow roots and the want to travel; the desire for independence and the longing for another; the diverse and suasive avenues of the heart; the meaning of transience; the sporadic despondency and the search for inspiration. The photographs from ANOTHER ROOM, work to summon and convene these opposites and relocate my personal experience to some place between multiple and varied psychological states.

Performative in essence, the work is largely concerned with the meaning and existence of the self in today’s unstable, fragmented world. Specifically how the individual is able to reconcile the external and internal forces that cause us to function in different, often contradictory, roles. While narrative based, the highly personalized iconography combined with the subjects subtle and often strange interaction with their environment, and the surreal lighting contribute to the sense that the unfolding narrative is not about the specific event depicted in the image, nor about the subject at all. The work is rather about a contemporary state of existence, and my own internalized dramas as being played out within each room. In this way the figure's relationship with the space becomes the main subject matter of the work, and allows each image to exlpore how the self is defined when isolated.

Moreover ANOTHER ROOM attempts to reconcile the internal and external forces that inform our identities and moves toward a renewed interest in beauty, aesthetics and personal symbolism. Indeed, the work aims to consider, in depth, the neurosis of a single individual and within that invites the viewer to reflect on their own private relationship with their external and internal worlds.

Haley Jane Samuelson is a Brooklyn, NY based artist.
To view more of Haley's work, please visit her website.