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An Indecisive Moment

  • hsamuelson indecisive moment2
  • 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.
  • My photographs work to summon and convene these opposites and relocate my personal experience to some place between multiple and varied psychological states.
  • The photographs from “An Indecisive Moment” attempt to locate the specific rhythm and buried consciousness of a particular moment in time, and work to communicate the feminine experience on the threshold of adulthood.
  • Working with dancers from the major New York Dance Companies, the work is largely concerned with the meaning and existence of womanhood in today’s unstable, fragmented world. Specifically how women are able to reconcile the modern female archtype with the reality of their personal experiences.
  • Borrowing from Victor Turner’s idea of liminal space, the photographs take place in abandoned settings, quite often man made structures being reclaimed by their natural surroundings. These places of transition provide the opportunity to position the feminine experience on a literal threshold of what once was and what is about to be. While given some instruction, the dancers mostly draw from their own personal experiences and the immediacy of their environment to create their performance, which I then document. This allows the work to function multiple levels, both personal and universal as we work together to create a unique portrait of womanhood on the brink.
  • In essence, “An Indecisive Moment,” attempts to reconcile the reality of womanhood and the image of it, while moving toward a renewed interest in beauty, aesthetics and personal symbolism.
  • Resulting from a unique collaboration, art was not the goal but the occasion and the method for telling our story. A complex narrative, it wrestles with a wide array of subject matter: sexuality, anger, love, death, beauty and fear, and it does so shamelessly and without self-awareness. Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, “there is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.”
  • Perhaps this is our own.