Personal History

Show me how you live and I'll tell you who you are.

Sarah Malakoff's large-scale color photographs investigate domestic interiors as both a refuge from and a re-creation of the outside world. In Personal History, she turns her attention to objects displayed within American homes that reference culture, history, and ideology. Whether representations of historical figures, events, or monuments, the possessions point to a longing for connection to the past and an engagement with the world at large. Often the collections of objects underscore the privilege and power implicit in the act of collecting. These souvenirs resonate--sometimes humorously, sometimes disturbingly--with the other possessions and architecture that surround them, uneasily vacillating between heroism and kitsch, patriotism and colonialism.