Unsettling Interiors Photographed by Sarah Malakoff

Boston-based photographer Sarah Malakoff‘s large-scale photographs examine the home and “its psychologically charged, uncanny spaces and objects.” Each interior feels like a scene on hold, as if they were shot just as someone walked out of the room, soon to return. We are left to speculate and to imagine its inhabitants. Malakoff describes her intentional exclusion of humans, explaining that “the private and personal are expressed in part by objects and signifiers which are displayed versus those which are hidden; what is allowed inside, and what is kept out. For example, doors and windows both frame exterior views and keep the elements at bay. Land, weather, and wildlife are ever present on the other side of the wall even as they are brought safely inside in the form of pattern, simulation, and domesticated animals. Ironically, both indoors and out equally project artifice.”

She also talks about tensions “between absence and presence, old and new, real and surreal, permanent and transient, genuine and artificial, the domestic and the natural worlds”, and our inherent need to resolve them. It’s this quest for resolution and control that pushes us to create our own narrative of what occurs in these spaces, and most importantly, who is in them.

Discover More