Samantha Jensen

United States
Statement

My process is an exploration of the limitations of portrait photography to present fixed identities – of efforts to consolidate a subject within the confines of a frame. Instead, I engage with fragmentation and invite the viewer to put the pieces together.

The collages often begin as single images, but within the printing process the images are ripped and torn. The disparate pieces are then reattached, presenting them to the viewer to be structured anew, employing our desire as humans to heal and preserve relationships. Rupture and restoration are both collaborative processes.

My work is concerned with the construction of wholes from parts — moments are to narratives as a touch is to care; as a gesture (both in my tearing of the paper, and in those almost imperceptible physical gestures of my subjects) is to a series of possible persons and their relationships. Present through all of this, though, is the recognition that tears – both in images and in relationships – can rarely be seamlessly mended, and that in spite of this there is beauty in their “repair.”

 

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Former artists