I pursue contradiction and dislocation, like the misplacement of an object or the unexpected joining of two things. My pictures are like something you see out of the corner of your eye, unimportant but persistent—a gesture, a passing car, a snowball splitting into a million pieces—that is rendered significant through the act of photographing.

My visual vocabulary is about texture, weight, density–the heaviness of air, the gravity of bodies. Solid entities begin to move and kinetic entities halt to a stop. People that should be upright are on the ground; people that should be firmly on land are at sea.

These small contradictions hint at a world ever so slightly off its axis, where expectations are subverted and edges are misaligned. The resulting fissures between edges form the space in which my pictures exist. This space is not simply ambiguous but also uneasy and dark. It is a space where the unknown blooms, beckons, and engulfs us.

All images ©Sophie Barbasch