Confessions of Sam Samore

 

 

In this video, created on the occasion of the exhibition "Schizophrenic Beauty (Continued)" at Thomas Brambilla Gallery in Bergamo, the artist Sam Samore reflects on his work and shares the thoughts that guided his choice of photographic subjects. Samore began his artistic journey in the mid-1970s, but it was in the 1990s that his practice gained full recognition, establishing him as an iconic figure in the contemporary art scene. The artist retraces his beginnings, his first steps into the art world, and the vibrant cultural landscape of those years. He discusses the generational shifts he has witnessed and how they have shaped his artistic sensibility. The exhibition presents around twenty photographic works, both in black and white and in color, focusing on two recurring and deeply symbolic subjects: eyes and lips. This choice is far from accodental- it is rooted in the artist's personal experiences and passions, or as he calls them, his "near-obsessions". These close-ups, marked by a deliberately pronounced photographic grain, transform detail into symbol: the gaze and the mouth become intruments of a visual language that oscillates between sensuality and expressionism, between reality and abstraction. Suspended in a dreamlike and mysterious atmosphere, the images invite the viewer to complete what is only suggested- to recontruct the invisible face behind each fragment.

 

 

 

Sam Samore was born in 1953 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and lives and works in New York and Bangkok [fig. 1]. He is considered a pioneer of large-scale conceptual photography, with strong ties to the post-conceptual art of the 1970s. Early in his career, with his work The Suicidist (1973), he reflects on the psychology of extreme actions and cinematic imagery, foreshadowing themes of voyeurism, existential drama, and theatrical self-representation.

 

 

His work draws inspiration from the great masters of painting—Caravaggio for his intense chiaroscuro, Matisse for his vibrant palette, and Rembrandt and Manet for their figurative sensibility—and from cinematic narrative strategies: André Bazin, Alfred Hitchcock, Andy Warhol, and Chris Marker are key references for his visual narrative deconstruction. Classical and experimental literature, from Homer’s archetypes to the linguistic experiments of Robbe-Grillet and Joyce, inform his fragmented, non-linear storytelling, resulting in suspended and ambiguous visual sequences.

 

 

Samore has exhibited widely on the international stage, with solo shows at Kunsthalle Zürich, Fondation Cartier (Paris), MoMA PS1 (New York) [fig. 2-3], Casino Luxembourg, De Appel (Amsterdam), Galerie Gisela Capitain (Cologne), Capitain-Petzel (Berlin), and D’Amelio Terras (New York). His films have been screened at venues such as the Rockbund Museum (Shanghai), Anthology Film Archives (NY), Art Basel, and the Locarno Film Festival. Samore has also published four collections of short stories, demonstrating his enduring interest in storytelling and the human psyche [fig. 4-5-6].

 

 

 

Samore’s artistic journey begins with The Suicidist (1973), a series of black-and-white self-portraits in which the artist stages his own death in various scenarios, resembling sequences from an imaginary film noir. [fig. 7-8] These images, later shown at MoMA PS1 in New York, immediately reveal his tendency to transform photography into narrative, blending irony, tension, and tragedy. From the outset, his interest in the theatricality of the face and gesture is evident, a theme that would later lead him to focus on eyes and lips as symbolic and emotional elements. 

 

 

His photographs are often organized in diptychs, triptychs, or vertical towers of multiple images, a format he has developed over more than forty years [fig. 9-10]. In these compositions, anatomical details—especially eyes and lips—recur and overlap as evocative fragments. The grain of the film and the close-ups enhance the unsettling effect, transforming what is intimate into a visual enigma, almost abstract [fig. 11-12].

 

 

From the 1980s onward, with works such as Situations, the artist focuses on the human figure, depicted in ordinary gestures but imbued with latent narrative tension, almost cinematic in nature [fig. 13-14]. Over time, his gaze narrows to increasingly intimate details, elevating eyes and lips to the central subjects of his exploration. A further refinement of this language is found in Allegories of Beauty (Incomplete) (1990s), where female faces and mouths appear enveloped in a dense, unfinished black-and-white. These suspended images allude to an unattainable ideal of beauty, destined to slip away at the very moment it seems to emerge.

 

 

With Belladonna (2004), his gaze becomes a true ground for metamorphosis: pupils, digitally manipulated, transform into flower stamens. The viewer witnesses a disturbing hybrid between body and nature, where the eye becomes a poisonous, seductive, and threatening flower at the same time. In later series such as Scenarios and Scenes, the face dissolves into a blurred visual flow, while eyes and lips, though still recognizable, become allusive signs, traces of an elusive identity. This process culminates in Dissolves (2021–2022), where multiple faces overlap and blend in multiple dissolves, erasing any individual outline. The image is no longer a portrait, but a fluid intertwining of presences, a liquid and ever-changing existential condition [fig. 15-16-17]. 

 

 

Throughout his work, eyes and lips are not mere anatomical details: they become universal symbols of relation and alterity. To look at them is to confront the other and oneself, in a continuous play of projections, desires, and recognitions. It is in this ambiguous space, suspended between myth and perception, that Samore returns narrative and poetic strength to photography.

 

 

In addition to photography, Samore has developed an intense cinematic career. He studied Film and Television at San Francisco State University and earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico. His first feature film, Hallucinations/Paradise (2010), is a surreal fable set in contemporary Shanghai, exploring themes such as madness, love, and daily life. The film was showcased at international festivals and received accolades for its originality and emotional depth. In 2022, Samore wrote and directed Mirror of Happiness, an artist film that tells a fragmented fable about love and the desire for connection, set against the backdrop of a global recession. The film was shown at several international venues, including the Rockbund Museum in Shanghai and the Art Basel film program [fig. 18].

 

 

In addition to these feature films, Samore has created numerous short films and video works, including Veritas (2012), [fig. 19] a video piece exploring the concept of truth through broad themes such as the environment, health, love, and immortality, shot in Paris and Beijing. His cinematic works have been presented at major cultural institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Locarno Film Festival.