Adrian Samson is an award-winning London-based commercial photographer. Selected as one of Lürzer’s Archive’s Top 200 Best Photographers Worldwide 2012/2013, Samson shoots commissions for the top agencies and global clients including Xbox, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Royal Mail, Motorola, Vespa, Piaggo, MTV and Ford among many others.
After a seven-year career working in a highly recognizable conceptual, technically sophisticated and often humorous style, this past year Samson developed a new body of personal work that introduces emotional subjectivity, realism and otherworldly light into studio and man-on-the-street portraits, studio still-lifes and his trademark conceptual work all without sacrificing high production values. I am drawn to beautiful work of course, but also to photographers who are, at this moment, working in a way that reconciles realism, expressionism, and neo-classicism (if all this can exist in commercial photography) in a way that integrates subjective and objective ways of knowing and appreciating our and others’ experiences of life. I often think that it is this level of sophisticated image making that will connect most powerfully with people.
Reflections (Series)
I was immediately taken with Samson’s new images and had a feeling there was an interesting conversation to be had. He agreed to give POP his first US interview about his new work, we arranged a call and spent about an hour on the phone that felt like talking with an old friend. A few back and forths and a half-hour turnaround on images later and we had an interview.
It was an honor to speak with him at this point and to be trusted with helping to publicize an important step in his career. I’m very interested to see where he goes with his new work. In the meantime, a big thank you to Adrian for a sincere and thoughtful interview and for sharing his new work with POP.
ECHOES (Out take from film)
POP: Your work has recently gone through an evolution.
Yes, it’s gone through a process in the past two years that has made it more evocative and atmospheric as opposed to the form I was shooting before. It also reflects more of my feelings, whether it’s something recent or something that I carry from the past. I get inspired from my memories, the fascinations I had towards certain things and how I conceived the world around me. For example as a child I would pick up a colored glass and look at the world trough it. I would carry that glass around in my hand all day. I try to remember how I felt, what I saw and then I bring those emotions to my pictures.
Glass
Kaleidorium
POP: How did this evolve? Were you shooting personal work in this new style? What were the first images/series?
I had to take a break at some point and ask myself where I am in this world. What are the really important things to me and what needs to be scrapped. It’s this kind of meditation (or the need of it) that eventually started to get trough in my work. Finally I was able accept things that I found very difficult to accept before. The first series from this period was called Awakening and it was a series of three images of body builders flying in mid air as if they were lifted up by some invisible higher power. It was a portrayal of the strong spirit and body that’s I felt I have.
toi, moi, eux
toi, moi, eux
POP: Why did you decide to transition to a more personal style? You’ve said there was not as much emotion in your earlier work. What does this new work mean to you? Why was it important for you to put yourself into your work?
It gives me more satisfaction to work on something that I can emotionally connect to. I can connect to my memories, the shapes and colors that remind me of something, rather than working with things that have not much meaning in my life. For example I wouldn’t be the right person to shoot a book about skateboarders because skateboarding never meant anything to me. It just makes sense that your work should be in a strong bond with your experiences and reflect the aesthetics that formed your life. In my previous work my approach was more conceptual but then I saw that my less conceptual work lasted longer in my book.
The Boxers (Series)
Honesty means a lot to me. I look at fewer pictures and I’m less inclined to compare my work to other photographer’s work. Subsequently I get more honest with myself, which I think helps a lot. If I can successfully transfer this honesty into my work then I’m happy. When I see something beautiful in life and I can effectively capture that with my camera, then I’ve done my job and I get great satisfaction out of it.
POP: It seems that the desire of many photographers to produce more authentic work is coinciding with a demand for this type of imagery from clients. Have you found that clients are starting to respond to and ask for work that has an ability to connect with their customers through a genuine emotion rather (whether evoked or depicted realistically) than a manipulated desire?
I try not to assume who will like my pictures but I also agree with you that in the current situation it seems like the genuine and real are more important than it used to be. I think many of us had a tendency to judge images according its production value, especially in the advertising world. It seems not be the case anymore. In the same time photography has become available to everyone and everyone has become a judge of it.
But as we all know, the most admired images are not necessarily the most amazing ones. It’s the same with other creative forms like music or movies. Steven Spielberg’s movies or the BBC’s Life documentaries are incredibly beautiful and everybody likes them. But it would be quite deranged if we tried to bring their aesthetics into our own work. It would be even more naive to expect that we will get the same recognition as they got for doing what they are known for.
I think a good client will always look for authenticity in a work. What this means to them comes down to the individual. In any case, it evolves and changes, just like the photographer’s work should evolve and change. I’m sure it’s more exciting for a commissioner to find something fresh and new rather then going trough the same old stuff. I think in general, the art and the commercial world always wants to see genuine and authentic work. The problem is that nothing stays genuine too long as it gets copied and reused again and again. So every time there is a bit of a fresh breeze everyone tries to grasp a bit of it.
ECHOES (Out take from the film)
We all remember moments when we felt unusually ecstatic, sad, lost or loved, like the girls in my short movie called ECHOES. The echoes are not always sound echoes. They often come as a recollection of images and feelings. Something that hits you unexpectedly as you walk the street or when you are washing the dishes. Sometimes it’s pleasant and sometimes it’s horrifying. They come and go and I either try to capture the subject of those thoughts or I place a mirror in front of the viewer saying …This is you responding to your thoughts. Like the people in my Reflection series.
POP: What from your older work did you bring forward to this new body of work?
The series called “The Rabbit, The Monkey, The Wasp and The Dragon” and the “Circus” stills carries the conceptual sense that was so paramount in my previous work. I kept them though because they also reflect on the sentiment of the new direction of my work. The toys on these pictures remind me my favorite toys from childhood and I still feel relevant the tension and drama with which they are portrayed. The watches series is a quite recent commission that came out from this personal work.
The Wasp
The Rabbit
Watches
POP: What is your background and what are your current inspirations?
I have no photographic or artistic background, but I’ve been always quite sensitive to all forms of arts. When I was young, I had a band, I wrote poems, sang in a choral and so on. Those days photography was unaffordable to me and even if I have some early memories of shooting, I couldn’t make it a hobby. It was way in my mid twenties when I could start to experiment with photography.
When I got to America in the late nineties I finally had the means to buy the films and the cameras. I was shooting lots of travel and experimental photography. I started to work as a portrait photographer and then I got to Toronto and eventually I ended up in London. I bought my first photo books in LA and it was the first time I was looking at contemporary art photography. Then from there photography started to mean almost everything to me. These days I don’t buy many books. I go to galleries and I look at works that have an exciting light, color or form. These are the elements that inspire me and that’s what I look for when I look trough my camera.
POP: How much is shot in the camera? Are you doing less post-production than you were?
I spend probably the same much time looking at the picture in Photoshop as I used to, but I definitely do fewer changes to them. I prefer to work more before and during the shoot, rather then after the shoot. Therefore much of my retouching comes down to a basic color and light correction. I try to keep my pictures looking like real photographs and not like over manufactured promotional material or a screenshot from a video game. Yet, I accept that the postproduction itself is a genuine part of the creative process.
The post has as many trends and styles as the photography or the object of the photography itself and I use it as a tool to differentiate my work. But essentially, I experiment more with camera techniques and lens effects rather than moving things around in post. All the work in my current portfolio is from the last two years where I was doing all the retouching by myself. I realized that this is the only way to have consistency in my book.
Mercury
Gardenfish
POP: What camera are you shooting with?
I now shoot with small cameras like the 5D. I used to work with Hasselblad and Phase One backs for many years, but I found that the small format can take the same good pictures and it’s much easier to use and carry around. Actually I remember my first cameras were small format film cameras, then medium format films, then small format digitals, then medium format digitals and now it’s a small format digital again. I guess because I’m becoming less interested in the cameras and more interested in how I can use them. On the other hand, when we get commissioned we are always asked for the highest output possible, so I still need to hire medium format backs.
On a personal level though I like to use small cameras. You can’t shoot on the street with a Hasselblad H2 because everyone assumes that you are doing something important and that comes with too much attention. It is also much more difficult to shoot with. It’s slow and clumsy. I like quick and simple cameras so I can focus on the light and the other things that are in front of the lens and not behind it. Most of the cameras take great pictures. It’s more the lenses that I’m interested in. I hope to shoot with some old PL mount lenses as they produce a slightly different blur. The only drawback of the small format that I’d like to point out is the too long frame on the horizontal side. I always thought that the shorter medium size camera frame makes much more sense.
POP: Has your location lighting changed as well?
Yes, in most of my outdoor work I use only natural light but I search for the places where the given light looks almost like an artificial light from a film set. In my previous work I used to be able to move around my light sources as much as I wanted but now I tend to work around what is given. In the Guarantee or the Reflections series there is just the camera and the hunt for the light I want to capture. I wait for my subject to arrive to the spot where I know they will be lit as if they were standing on a theatre stage. It’s amazing how many variations of perfect light scenarios you can get just by waiting on the right spot. I get really fascinated by this and I can spend days shooting people on the street. I think it’s the best school to observe the light on a person.
The Guarantee
Reflections
POP: How do you recreate the same light in the studio that you find on location? Are you shooting composites in the studio?
Some of my works, as the Gardenfish or the night street toys are composites of studio and location work. I shoot usually the background first in an existing light and then come back to my studio and light the objects the same way as the background image was lit. The dimensions of the composites often differ, so my street light source in the studio can become a size of a needle hole. The result can be very convincing and it makes you believe that it was all shot together.
The Monkey
POP: The Boyfriend series feels very natural although I assume you used models or actors and styled the shots.
The Boyfriend is the only one from the street sets that is staged. I hired actors and I had a loose brief for them. Most of the direction came as we were going. For the diffused low contrast effects I used some DIY tools to alter the light. On the sets like The Guarantee or the Reflections I was shooting a genuine street life. I’ve done The Boyfriend series so I could exercise the recreation of those candid sets. I wanted to see if I could achieve the same look in a case I get commissioned to do that. On The Guarantee series though, I shot the smoke separately in my studio. The story is about greedy traders and bankers involved in some global corporate transactions. The smoke represents the ruthless nature of that environment.
The Boyfriend (Series)
The Boyfriend (Series)
The Guarantee (Series)
POP: The White Light series. Is this about our relationship to light or is light used to depict an emotional state?
It’s a bit of both. It’s about a group that entered a space that could be a different dimension filled with nothing but some organic light. To me it feels like a spiritual experience, because there is no physical distraction. The participants also look enlightened as the light becomes fluid, something they can almost touch.
Where they are going, why they are there and how they feel is up to you. For me it’s as close as I get to my dreams when I’m awake.
White Light (Series)
White Light (Series)
POP: What has the response been to your new work?
I must say that it’s been great. I’ve been meeting with people I was not expecting to meet. I had a few proposals coming trough lately where it was apparent that it’s in line with my new work. Just recently I had a healthcare client who wanted me to shoot and direct a campaign that adopts the look and feel of my ECHOES film and pictures.
POP: Have your reps been encouraging?
At the moment I don’t have a rep in the UK and the ones I’m in talks with are very encouraging and they want to see more. Last time when I sent out emails to about ten of my favorite UK reps, four of them got back to me within an hour. That definitely reassured me that I’m on the right path. There is also a fantastic agency from New York who contacted me recently and one rep that has an office here and in New York. It all suggests that there is a lot going to happen early next year when these talks will hopefully get finalized. The reps I have in Europe and Asia are all great and they are always really supportive too.
POP: Have you been hired for and shot any jobs in this style?
Not yet but I guess it will happen soon as there is only the new work showing on my website now. If there is a job that requires my style, then the agency wants to see an extensive work in that style. If my portfolio solidly reflects that, then it could be me who will do it. If there is only one picture that relates to their needs, then the chances are that they will go with someone whose book is more relevant. At the end they need to be able to justify to the client why they picked you.
It takes a long time to build a body of work that carries a message, feels rounded and is fresh. It can take even longer till the art buyers see it. This is the reason why we need a good agent or a good strategy for showing our work. There is a lot happening everyday day in the photographic world and if you can’t show what you have created after it’s done, then the chances are that it will get irrelevant soon after.
POP: What’s next?
Next I’m going to see my parents for Christmas. My mom is a really serious photographer at the moment. She goes out everyday and probably takes more pictures than I do. This year she started to take some really beautiful pictures, so I can’t wait to go out with her for shoot out. It makes me smile if I think of it. She is 61, I’m 37 and I’m very proud of her. Merry Christmas to your readers too.
Kaleidorium
