Susan Dobson

December 1, 2005 - December 31, 2005

Susan Dobson’s “Open House” series explores the relationship between self-identity, biography and home décor in her large-scale color photographs of residential interiors. For the home owner, veracity has taken a backseat to the process of assimilation, gathering, and transforming individual elements into carefully constructed biographies. The careful crafting of each photograph hints at a secondary narrative, as the sharp, saturated images suggest that the photographs, like the interiors, might be purposeful constructions. Sixteen Oakville residents collaborated with Dobson, an artist known for her documentation of a town’s growth into generic urban sprawl. Seeing the details of the residents’ living spaces through their eyes, Dobson worked to photographically “frame” the scope of their lives in the form of an image of a key room in each of their homes.