Palm Trees in Suspense 1986

Sandy Skoglund made this photograph, Palm Trees in Suspense, sometime in the twentieth century. The whole scene is bathed in these really strong, kind of sickly-sweet colors—pink, orange, blue—it's like being inside a candy that's also a slightly unsettling dream. What grabs me is how the color seems to push everything forward, flattening the space, and it makes you question what’s real and what’s staged. Look at the blue hands reaching across the table, they're so present, like characters in a play, yet they're totally artificial. The color and composition have this effect, it makes you think about how photos can create their own version of reality. It reminds me a little of David Hockney's photographs, in the way Skoglund constructs these artificial environments. But where Hockney is interested in space and perspective, Skoglund really dives into the emotional impact of color and texture. And that's what keeps me coming back to this piece. There is something so unnatural and unnatural about it, like an ongoing conversation between the real and the artificial.