Sarah Jones

Jones enjoys photography for its capability to scrutinize something, freezing a moment to look more closely at it. "Perhaps photography allows us to daydream; reverie is where time seems to stretch out." Jones states in an interview with A.M. Homes for Frieze magazine. She is also influenced by psychoanalysis and the theories of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and other well known psychological theorists. These ideas of psychoanalysis were explored in her series of photos of psychoanalyst couches. She wanted to explore the spaces that allowed for people to re-live experiences and loosen the grip that their past has on them. Through talking with the head of the British Institute of Psychoanalysis, she learned that patients often acted as if there were a third party in the session. This was interesting to her in the sense of the camera being the third presence, creating the idea of an audience. Jones' images are narrative in nature, and she is interested in how a narrative is constructed. She also believes that photography leaves a space for the viewer to bring a unique narrative and experience to an image. She develops her narratives using various visual codes that allude to the many different references that she makes throughout her work. Some of these codes include her use of reference to art history, and her fetishization of hair. Her photograph "Horse(profile)(black)(I)" from 2010 has been referenced to Eadweard Muybridge's black horse, and her photographs of roses are said to be compared to Karl Blossfeldt's botanical studies. Her art historical references are apparent in her choice of colors. She has a strong presence of blue, to indicate the sublime, or distance in Renaissance painting. As well as strong notes of red in her photos such as in "Living Room (Curtain)(I)]". Her Flower series is heavily influenced by the gothic era, pulling inspiration from the aesthetics of that time to create 'Victorian rose gardens' and rich mysterious colors and darkness. She is also influenced by the Victorian cultural obsession with photographing hair, and how hair can act as an allegory to location and figure, or in her words hair can represent "nature gone slightly mad". Hair reminds her of the roses she photographs, "visceral, spindly and beautiful, in bloom but slightly diseased".

Jones' work is held in the following permanent collections: • Arts Council Collection, London • Goetz Collection, Germany • Government Art Collection, UK • Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam, the Netherlands • San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA • Science Museum Group, UK • Tate, London • Victoria and Albert Museum, London