Sam Taylor-Wood is a member of the generation of British artists who revitalised the English art scene in the nineties. She studied sculpture at the renowned Goldsmiths' College, University of London, where she graduated in 1990. She then worked at the Royal Opera House in London, where she had the opportunity to discover the world of the image and the visual and dramatic power of opera. Her interest from that time on in the theatre, drama and life itself finally convinced her to give up sculpture and to dedicate herself to producing images. "I decided that photography and film were my natural medium; I wanted to work with images and not with inanimate objects." In her work, the artists chooses as her theme human relationships and portrays them in different attitudes and in intense emotional states, such as the mise-en-scène of the existential vacuum (Killing Time, 1994) and the drama of sharing psychic spaces in the same domestic setting (Travesty of a Mockery, 1995). Many of her favourite themes are to be found once again in Pent-up (1996), in which Taylor-Wood depicts the invasion of privacy, the crisis of authenticity and the personal dialectic understood as an exercise that is both full and empty, mysterious and revelatory. In 1995, Sam Taylor-Wood began "Five Revolutionary Seconds", a series of panoramic photos that she installs together with sound sequences. Of the nine pieces that make up the series, the last three were produced in Barcelona especially for the exhibition that the artist put on in 1997 in the Sala Montcada exhibition room run by the Fundació "la Caixa". In these photos, the artist lays the emphasis on the exploration of boredom, violence, dissatisfaction and other contemporary forms of tension.