Interview: Sam Falls
This week features an interview with Sam Falls. If his name is familiar, that’s I showed a fair amount of his work on Sunday Showcase two weeks ago.
I’d followed Sam’s work for a while and loved its mysticism, a feeling I don’t often get with photography. Sam and I started emailing back and forth after I’d reached out to him about showing his work on too much chocolate, and it only made sense to let our conversation dig a little deeper and become an interview on this site. So here it is: more work by Sam and a peek into his creative process.
Mother’s Studio
Return to the Alps (12)
Jake Stangel: You’ve lived in Vermont, Portland, and now NYC. We’ve talked a little bit about the differences between living in a space like VT versus NYC, but can you tell me what stages of your life you spent in each location, and how each place you’ve lived in affects your work? Is it tied into any “life outlook” that carries over into your photography or painting? Has there been a most fruitful place for you to live in?
Sam Falls: Well I was born in San Diego, CA. and moved to Vermont when I was five, though I spent parts of my summers in California with my dad. I went to college at Reed in Portland, and spent a little over four years there total, and have been living in Brooklyn for about three now.
I guess everyplace has its ups and downs; I’m not one of those people who like to go around pumping my fist about how rad Vermont is, but honestly it is a great state to live in. My mom, who is an artist as well, had to basically re-invent her work when we moved to VT and though we were pretty broke growing up I still feel like I had a privileged childhood. This relied not only on my mom’s hustle, but also the strength of community organization and individuals’ charitable nature, which I think runs throughout VT. Vermont is kind of sheltered, which works both ways – you leave with a sense that anything’s possible with hard work and that everyone is trustworthy, but there’s definitely a lack of exposure to arts and culture.
Godfather’s studio window
So Portland was great for that –it was accessible without being overwhelming. It was small enough where you could get around the city and skateboard all night safely, but big enough that there were actually places open all night and you could do anonymous poetry readings or see bands you knew. Artistically it was a pretty encouraging place to be but there wasn’t much critical judgment or venues outside of school, but tons of peer support – it was super exciting to have friends taking the arts seriously, as a plan for life. So Portland was a really confirming time and a great place to experiment with what I wanted to do while going to school and living cheaply. But then I think there’s kind of a threshold in Portland as a young artist in terms of osmotic exposure and growth in both seeing and learning which becomes the same as making and showing.
The best place for this for the visual arts seemed to be New York City. As soon as I got to NYC I knew things had to change because I’d been shooting mostly outdoors in nature with lights and set-ups, plus at first I didn’t know anyone, so that’s when I really returned to painting and started having a studio methodology.
Light Box
Sprayed Bullets
JS: As a riff off of the last question of location, I’d love to hear a bunch more about your in-studio setups, which I guess constitute a lot of your work by now(?). When did you start taking ‘studio images’ (would you call it that)? What brought about your working in a studio setting, and what are some of the most enjoyable aspects of working in a controlled environment?
SF: My ‘studio’ knowledge really developed from working for Trevor Graves at Nemo Design, a design studio/branding agency, where I was a photo assistant while going to college. In high-school I learned to shoot with hot lights and all, but Nemo was a full on professional set-up and Trevor essentially gave me a saturated two week crash course in shooting with medium-format digital backs, strobe lighting, creating backdrops, and the rest was “figure it out”. He also had a giant collection of old Polaroid and large format cameras plus film he let us take out and experiment with on the weekends. I shot my entire undergraduate thesis at Studio Nemo and basically learned everything through trial and error with Trevor always pointing me in the right direction but making me learn it on my own. This was awesome because Reed was totally a theory/conceptual driven program and I really just concentrated on my written thesis at school.
The enjoyable part of the studio set-up now is that I control an environment where I can do whatever I want with painting/sculpture/photography/video for five hours and not feel self-conscious or censored. There’s a lot of trial and error that goes into my work and many pieces never make it out, but each step progresses to something else and it’s nice to have a storehouse of these movements. I’m intent on having uninterrupted and sufficient time to work, everyday if possible, so it’s great to have a space with things like consistent lighting at 2 pm or 2 am, as well as not have anyone mess with my shit that needs to dry, drip, or expose. It’s like having a garage to practice a new trick in at night so that when your mom drops you off at the skate-park you feel comfortable skating around.
OOrange
Notre Dame Loop
JS: What kind of effect did working at Nemo have on you? In terms of direction, discovering what elements of creative/art worlds you appreciate, and which elements you didn’t?
SF: The technical and professional experience/education was priceless, and while the skills have helped with my own work, there isn’t much overlap in talking about creative/arts world from there to what I do now. I was influenced by how hard the head guys hustled and noticed the apparent happiness matched with stress of running a company, plus the respect and pride among the people working there.
JS: Could you walk me through any one image you’ve made that you really love? Any preplanning/vision involved, setup, and how you tweak a concept/aesthetic until you’ve made the final photograph? I’d especially love it if you could talk about either the shot of you upside down with what looks like a speedgraphic, the colored/gelled stones, or the red hair bands w/black hair.
SF: Yeah, I don’t have overall favorites of the pieces I’ve created (though I tend to favor whatever’s the most recent). Of the one’s you’ve mentioned, both the ‘upside-down’ image and Locks of Love are to a greater or lesser degree self-portraits. When I did the upside-down piece I bought out a Walgreens’ watercolor supply to make a portrait series of all 44 presidents (I made it to Lyndon Johnson I think), and at the same time I had found this mirror that I was going to shoot my portrait in and us a 3-D filter on to do a little humorous update on the Parmigianino Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, but because both were turning out a little heavy handed I combined them in a way, trying instead to work with a perspective shift that involved a self-portrait on large-format film without using a cable release or having the mirror be a direct reflection of the self but focused on something else.
The watercolors function as a play on the color checker in photography, or maybe how I feel about commercial photography, as well as a reference to painting and portraiture. I wanted to also go for a sense of looping and I think there is some strange motion involved by not pointing the light source on the object being photographed (the mirror) but directing our attention to the subjects, the watercolors and myself (my hand). Also, the quickload film holder covers my face more to be equated with the subjecthood of the watercolors and the notion that it too “holds” all the colors necessary to paint a portrait. Sounds kind of overdone in writing I guess.
Locks of Love
Locks of Love is my hair that I donated to the organization of the same name – it’s just a straight photo of the hair after it was cut on a black backdrop.
JS: When you’re making work, do you find yourself experimenting with any recurring variables (anything from light to color to nontangibles like… illusion, etc.)? Are there ever “constants” to you?
SF: I really can’t say anything distinct, there’s never an equation that produces a picture. There are re-occurring subject themes, like art-history, portraiture, people and places of personal import, representation, and my interest in landscapes that have been romanticized by painters and in my own world-view, like virtuous mountains ranges, as well as aesthetic trends such as how color works in photography as well its trends in taste and/or beauty. But I don’t work in a way that warrants one thing being pulled out and another plugged in, in fact that’s something I try to avoid.
No constants either – sometimes months will pass before I think it’s reasonable to shoot a horizontal oriented picture, but every night in the studio things switch up, pretty much. And whenever I leave New York I shoot and make ad-hoc studios wherever I go – for me studio really just means time and space.
Bird’s Nest/Cat’s Pad
JS: How much of your photography is done in camera? For everything else, is that done on a computer or… not in a computer?
SF: I’d say a moderate amount is done in camera, a moderate amount analog, and a moderate amount on a computer. I never consider one above the other.
JS: I feel a very appealing/approachable mysticism behind all of your work… I never fully know what’s happening, but I ‘get’ enough to keep looking… Either I am reading into your work too much- and a picture of a red umbrella and water canister is a picture of a red umbrella and water canister- or this feeling I get of hidden meanings/implications/subtle references are things I’m not picking up on. Could you help me out with this? Do you have any objectives for those who view your work?
Acrylic Water, Acrylic Floor
Rainy Day 1
SF: To avoid being obsessive and superstitious I basically subscribe to a materialist philosophy – so I wouldn’t say there’s any mysticism proper. However, I do find the Modernist truth approach an interesting and still available alleyway to get at more contemporary questions I have. This is not to say there isn’t a life to objects, like the red bota Lauren bought for our trip to Panama which we kept wine or rum in paired with another picture of the blue cards from that trip, each with a matching umbrella. Maybe ultimately those qualities are more for me than the viewer, and beyond that of course there is an objective, but it’s not always laid out or necessary for the picture to be meaningful in the strict sense of authorship and reading.
JS: You seem to have a lot of interest in objects and the ideas they signify or represent. Is this correct, and could you talk a little bit about it, either way? Are there any sorts of roots this approach that you can pinpoint?
SF: Well, I don’t know if I have so much interest in objects themselves as I do their meaning once leveled by photography. Their superficial qualities become much more important while their functional/defining characteristics become more abstract - this is interesting because objects become equated and appreciated for different reasons, what they represent gains importance over what they do.
Open Book (Visible Light)
JS: The classic influencers question: who/what are they, why are they, and in what ways do they factor into your work?
SF: Josh Willey, Lauren Maresca, and Jamie Kanzler are important friends whose lifestyles I admire – they’ve been critical and supportive, and most importantly have kept me honest.
In popular reference, Roberto Bolaño has been inspiring most recently – 2666 and The Savage Detectives exist now as the best new fiction I’ve read since Infinite Jest. Along with David Foster Wallace, there’s something sort of biographically harrowing expressed as in their novels that deals with sacrifice and sadness, an element of being reclusive by nature that’s synonymous with (their) work rather than circumstantial necessity, as well as a sort of elemental genius that is basically pure intent and honesty, as well as consideration for the reader.
JS: Do you work with mentors at all in any sort of formal or informal context? Who/what makes up your artistic social circle? Do you largely work in an insular way or do you flourish with more connectivity amongst like minded peers?
SF: My thesis advisor at Reed was a big influence and mentor, Aki Miyoshi. I stay in touch with him but it’s hard to keep a steady dialogue cross country. I’ve been working with Moyra Davey on my graduate thesis, I really respect her opinions and guidance.
Once a week I meet with Lucas Blalock, usually Sundays, and on Wednesdays with David Torch, Grant Willing, and Joe Zorilla. Also, usually Lauren Maresca and Militia Shimkovitz. That said, I really do work in an ‘insular’ way and am not a super actively social person really, I’d rather work, but it’s nice to see and share as much with people interested in similar things.
JS: Top 5 things you’re backing right now?
SF: Top 6?:
- My brother’s band OLDD NEWS (new E.P. here)
Sam Falls’ art is really incredible
[...] a great interview with him over on Too Much [...]