In the forward to ‘Pretty Telling I Suppose’, Gert Jonkers wrote that, “Sam never really knows what he’s going to photograph”. I very rarely see you with a camera, how do you incorporate photography into your life?
I don’t know. Some days I’ll just pick it up and take it out.
Do you sometimes kick yourself because you don’t have it with you?
Oh you know, something will come around again. Sometimes I take it out because I think something will be a great opportunity, I get the roll back and it’s nothing. I don’t know. It’s even beyond me.
You say that the moment will come back again. But something I take from your work is that they depict moments that happen by chance.
Well most of the photos I take now are in my apartment. Or I might go to a birthday party and take my camera to take some photos. Just in a normal way. But maybe on the way to or from, something will happen. But most of the time it’s just me cooking, or being in my apartment. And that’s it. And occasionally a storm will happen. I don’t search for anything.
The fact that a lot of your photos are set inside is interesting. I see rather drastic stylistic differences between your landscape work and the work that takes place in more intimate setting. Do you have a preference?
I like light. I can’t take photos on a sunny day. It just doesn’t work. Also because my camera can’t handle it and it’s just awful. So cloudy days.
Will that stay the same?
I don’t think so. Things are changing. I had a lot of over-exposed images, flared, stuff like that. But I’ve been noticing a change in what I’ve been doing. I’m getting into photos of stuff like eggs. ha
My favourite works of yours are portraits. And a lot of those are your friends. Obviously you have developed a trust with those people. As you do more organized shoots, for instance the shoot you just did for Russh, how will you create that same intimate environment?
With that Russh shoot we made sure that the models we were getting were at least interesting. She was really funny. She was totally real. She just showed up in a biker’s jacket and Volcom jeans and was just amazing. You know, has no idea about fashion or anything. Now she is one of the new faces of Prada and Calvin Klein and she is working in Paris and New York. She had just finished high school the day before. I mean she loves bongs, and told me how, you know, well she came to my house first and we just sat there and talked, and she told me how to survive rabies if I caught it. Stuff like that.
So you had kind of developed…
Yeah within half an hour we got along really well. And then the other models came along, and a lot of the other people on that shoot, well we tried to even it out, I brought in real friends, and photographed portraits of them. We wanted everyone to just hang out and get along and that’s what happened. No one hated, I mean it was a really fun day.
To have your friends there, is that a bit of a safety net? Do you find it difficult without that?
Well yeah. I’ve done that before. I just did a job in Melbourne and it was a bit difficult because I wasn’t close to the talent.
Did you find yourself having to direct them around?
Well yeah. But that sort of thing is really rare. It’s kind of a separate thing altogether. With the fashion stuff I’m only really working with Russh, and I don’t think I’ll really do anything else. I’ve turned down tonnes of stuff. It’s getting a bit too easy to slip into that…
I read an interview with Wolfgang Tillmans and he spoke of a safety that some photographers have and how big a challenge it is for some photographers to go into a shoot without too much of a preconceived idea.
Well yeah. A lot of places will tell you an idea of what they want. And you just agree with what they say, and then you just go and do it, and then they’re happy with you what you give them. It’s never going to turn out…especially with the way I shoot, because I don’t even know what I’m doing.
How sentimental are you? Do your photographs act as a sort of time capsule for you?
Um, yeah I’m quite sentimental. But maybe more nostalgic. Oh god what’s the difference between nostalgia and sentimental?
I think there is often a sort of melancholy associated with nostalgia.
Yeah I get that with the photos sometimes. Yeah I get quite nostalgic with them. I’m told I get a little too nostalgic about some. I’ve never really been embarrassed about them. Wait, what is sentimental again?
I think the sense that you like to hold onto things.
Oh yeah, no I don’t think I’m very sentimental. I mean with what I’m doing now, I’m destroying the negatives. I mean I hate having that stuff around.
Can you speak a little about your relationship with Rainoff? How did you meet those guys?
Rob had somehow stolen a picture of mine from the internet, well borrowed, and used it on his website. And he knew a mutual friend and he said, “Oh that’s Sam’s photo” and he gave Rob my details. So Rob emailed and asked me if he could used it and I said “yeah, sure”. I was overseas at that time. Then I went in and gave Rob a copy of my poster-zine and we just started hanging out. Then Sinisa just emailed me one day and said “do you want do a book?” and I was like “Ok”. And that was it. And then we just hung out more and more and more. And now I know you through them.
The title, ‘Pretty Telling I Suppose’; I know it’s a title of one of the photos but is there an irony there. Your photographs seem to invite very subjective readings.
The title is real because the image is a hand being waved in my face and it’s…well I’d spent a Christmas with my ex-boyfriend and I went to take a photo of him and he was like “don’t take my photo” and waved his hand up in my face and I was still stringing along this relationship and so it was quite a literal meaning of the image for me. I mean, that pretty much sums up everything and that’s it.
Have you had any problems? I mean I know there were potentially problems with publishing photos of ex’s?
No. I think that’s fine.
You have a show at MOP coming up. How did that come about?
Ron and George at MOP, they really like my stuff and they just wanted me to have a show there and they wanted to put me on during Art Month. They’re really great guys and I can relate to them because when I first met them I wasn’t really involved in the art scene at all and I’d had one little group show at Chalkhorse a few years before. They said they really liked the work and I was saying “Well I don’t really know how to get involved in the arts” and then they were like “it’s ok”. Because you know, I was saying how I didn’t go to art school and that I dropped out of high school, and they were in the same position and totally gave me the confidence to go forward and do stuff. And they’ve asked me to do this show, purely, I mean they like my work and I’m honoured.
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