I Have a Room with Everything

I Have A Room With Everything is a book of stunningly intimate photographs by Dutch artist Melanie Bonajo. Taken between 1998 and 2005, the images in this exquisitely printed volume present anti-journalistic, documentary style photographs, some real, and some staged. They are at once moving, whimsical, goofy, dark, haunting, romantic and revelatory. At times they are painfully alienating, yet deliriously gorgeous and fantastical. In I Have A Room With Everything traces of intense consciousness overlap reality and trigger Bonajo’s, as well as the viewer’s, imagination. “Photography for me is never intended to gain the upper hand,” says Bonajo, “but a way of sculpting mental life.” For Bonajo, taking the photograph is almost like a ritual, a supreme momentum in which there is an extended awareness of the different layers and meanings of reality. The book also includes a poster and entertaining interviews, conducted by Bonajo, with her father, mother, grandfather, and several of her friends.
Includes Poster.