Photographer of the Week #112: Sacha Vega

Our next Photographer of the week is Sacha Vega. A graduate of Pratt Institute, Vega is a mixed media artist from Maryland who recently finished traveling around Southern Asia.

For this profile, we’re sharing some of the work from Vega’s series WellWisher. These four photographs are excerpts from a larger series of still lifes and objects uncovered within the domestic space. Vega conceived this body of work after posting anonymous ads on Craigslist asking strangers, “What are you most afraid of?” A photograph was then created in reaction to the responses she received. Vega explains that with this project she “was curious in a possible nameless expression of fear and how [she] would interpret that moment of vulnerability.”

Each photograph presents something residual or leftover from a potentially anxious activity. A puzzle unfinished, a house plant partially wrapped, and an unknown spill left to stain all act as signifiers of a hesitant action in the past. The objects photographed in Vega’s body of work each function as a small narrative or visual poem in their quiet, yet alarming juxtapositions. Although these subjects would generally be overlooked in the every day, Vega’s documentation of these objects dramatizes and stresses an importance to their banality. We as viewers are left to ponder if there is something significant about a crimson stain on the pavement or charred pages in an open book. Vega’s practice seeks to test our perception of the things around us and is “excited in the possibilities of interrupting expectations in the act of looking.”

Vega recently had a solo exhibition of her work at 99 cent Plus Gallery in Brooklyn. For more from Vega, please take a look at her website.