Photo Friday: Sarah Horan

Originally from the Hudson Valley, New York, Sarah Horan earned her Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts Education from the State University of New York in New Paltz in 2010. During this time, she consistently worked with the Dia: Arts Foundation in their location in Beacon, NY. She is currently earning her Master of Fine Art Degree in Photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design and anticipates completing her thesis work this upcoming November. Upon graduating, she plans to begin teaching at the college level while continuing to pursue her own creative endeavors.

View more of Sarah's work here

‘Contact,’ is a photographic body of work in which human vulnerability is explored by showcasing the nude form and the immediate space it inhabits. It is instinctual to shy away from sharing the intimate details of our lives and bodies with others, let alone agreeing to be physically touched by a photographic recording device that threatens to expose what it comes into contact with in unpretentious yet uncompromising detail. The bodies of my subjects are indexically recorded with the use of a hand-held scanner. Beyond the few millimeters of extreme detail found in each individual piece, the remainder of the body fades in to a hazy blur, allowing the anonymity of the individual to remain intact. 

Although the act of scanning a nude form is akin to a sterile and callous operation, I approach it as a form of tenderness, resulting in intimate and emotionally charged imagery. I then piece together the individual scans to construct a sense of the whole with the knowledge of never being able to fully reconstruct what had stood before me. Through the fragmentation that results, the forms are as conflicted as they are harmonious.