These images by Mark Robbins were printed life-size for his 2003 installation at the Atlanta Center for Contemporary Art creating a powerful impact on the viewer. I particularly like his choice of placement and juxtaposition. The subject is set alongside their environment almost as you would set a plant in the corner of a room. The people have no higher level of importance in the piece than how they choose to arrange their furniture.
Model Homes: The Photography of Mark Robbins by Julie Lasky for the Design Observer
Mark Robbins’ Households is a collection of portraits in which the sitters are sometimes sitting rooms (or kitchens or bedrooms) and the people are polished, draped, and arrayed like furniture. Composed to resemble architectural plans or elevations – or in some cases the triptychs of medieval altarpieces – the images represent home dwellers and their environments.
…Slim margins separate the people from their interiors, building facades, urban settings, and one another – even when they are shown side by side.
Is that discreet white border a margin of privacy? A form of containment? A strip of mortar gluing together the bricks that form an establishment? By atomizing and rebuilding his pictorial edifices, Robbins deconstructs the identities and relationships they represent.
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