The large-scale, color photographs in Double Life appear to document the lives of two women in a relationship, when actually these images are digitally created montages of the same model, Kiba Jacobson, seen doubled as she plays both characters in each scenario. Using the computer as a tool to create a believable situation is not that different from accepting any photograph as an object of truth, or by creating a story about two people seen laughing, making-out, or quarreling in a restaurant. This work is an honest representation of the fluidity of the self in regards to decisions about intimate relationships, sexuality, gender, family, belief systems and lifestyle options.
The project’s multiyear span opens up new dialogues on women and aging and explores polarities of identity such as the masculine and feminine psyche, the irrational and rational self, the exterior and interior self, and the motivated and resigned. By combining multiple images of the same model in each image, the dualities of the self are defined through body language and clothing. The importance of these images lies in the representation of interior dilemmas portrayed as an external object: a photograph. In Double Life, the audience is presented with constructed realities that, through their fictions, reveal inner truths.