All by my selfie
Sam Samore’s photographs often show partial or whole female faces. Whether the subjects are staring right at us or gazing into space, we draw from them a strange sense of completion. Yet there is also a certain coldness as a result of the use of black and white and the anonymity of the subjects. Because of the imposing format of the photographs and the tight framing, the artist makes the viewer an actor in the scenes he photographs and depicts and fabricates characters and stories both real and imaginary.
"I choose faces for their singularity, because that is what makes them universal, to situate them in another time that suspends the need to think that these faces ever belonged to a specific time. My ambition is to consider them in a form of equivalence with classical sculpture for example, in order to bring out the constitutive part of myth: the link maintained between beauty and truth. The reading remains personal, open, ambiguous, and underlines the projection of the imaginary and the symbolic."
The artist creates collages from photographs taken at fashion shows and others directly taken with models. The two levels of staging blend together to create extremely intriguing moments of 'beauty' or 'allegories of beauty.' He pushes this obsession with the concept of one ideal beauty to the point of equating it to a Grecian ideal of the perfect body. However, it is at the very moment when perfection seems attainable that doubt sets in, suspicions and questions arise: what is true beauty? What Sam Samore is staging is ultimately an impasse for the audience who must face the 'unconscious reality', a psychological suspension and an insoluble anxiety of existential nothingness... decked out like birds of paradise. An infinite dread, hidden behind a veil of pure beauty. What is remarkable in the situations he creates, is that within them there is a kind of invented intermediary space in which one can temporarily voyage and enjoy a world which does not distinguish between public and private life, infantile naivety or mature intelligence. The established order of social values is turned on its head, interrupted and ultimately wiped out.
Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, 2005