American Period Rooms: Inside/Out
Since its invention, the photographic medium has had a varied and progressively troubled relationship with fact. Its connection to truth is increasingly questioned with each technical advance. “The American Period Rooms: Inside/Out” employs this tenuous relationship to call attention to the break between a period room’s original site and its current placement and display within the museum. In each image, the combination of elements from a room’s original context and its subsequent museum installation leads us to consider how museums adapt and mediate historical narrative. Ultimately, space, like language, communicates meaning, and while truth remains elusive, subjects captured by the camera encourage reflection about the tension between fact and fiction. – Anthony Marchetti, 2016