Untitled (Insomnia)

About the Photographer

Hobbs, Sarah

American, b.1970

For her "Small Problems in Living," series, Sarah Hobbs researches phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorders to then stage scenes in her home studio to photographically picture distinct human behaviors. Ranging in subjects from claustrophobia to vanity, Hobbs constructs acute tableaux within domestic settings. Obsessiveness is seen as a room painted in chocolate with the empty candy wrappers clustered in a mound on a drop cloth. Insomnia is pictured as a bevy of yellow note cards suspended just above an empty bed, indicating the presence of an individual occupying the late hours of the night with endless thoughts. These neuroses and mental disturbances manifest themselves in objects cluttering otherwise sparsely furnished rooms, multiplied to overtake if not quite overwhelm the space. There is just enough space left to allow the room an occupant, though one is never pictured. Hobbs leaves small clues to give away the constructed make-up of the images. Bits of string and tape are left included, showing the hand of the creator and serving as a metaphor for a mind at work.

Sarah Hobbs was born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1970, and began to photograph when she was seven years old. She earned both her BFA in Art History (1992) and her MFA in Photography (2000) from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. Select solo exhibitions include SubUrban: Sarah Hobbs at Knoxville Museum of Art in Tennessee, Small Problems in Living at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York, and Small Problems in Living at Solomon Projects in Atlanta, Georgia. She has also exhibited in Chicago at Woman Made Gallery; in Poughkeepsie, New York at Barrett House Gallery; in Athens, Georgia at Athens Academy and Georgia Museum of Art; and in Atlanta at Georgia Stage University Gallery, Artwalk, The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Upstairs Gallery, and Trinity School Art Auction. Her work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey.