Sage Sohier

Sage Sohier’s photograph from the series “Perfectible Worlds” provokes a sense of temporal dislocation. While the uniform of the British soldier locates him in a bygone age, the modern housing development in the background, complete with bright plastic toys strewn throughout the yard, anchors the picture firmly to the present. The photograph alludes to the famous story of Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving. In Irving’s tale, the title character falls asleep on a remote mountaintop, waking to find that many years have passed and that the Revolutionary War is over. Rather than being transported into the future, the reenactor pictured in Sohier’s image seems to have gone back to a significant battle of the Revolutionary War. She has created his own “perfectible world”-and escaped the modern day-by carefully reconstructing the past in the present.