I create photographic work that explores the complications and intricacies of identity in order to create a comprehensive understanding of it for myself and others. As a mixed-race person from a familial lineage of immigrants of varying socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, my derived interest in deconstructing my own identity has inspired me to explore the inherent mechanisms of identity itself.
I often capture the implicit image, subsequently seeking out the most comprehensive image behind it. My photographs vary in their impact and structure, with some presenting more recognizable visual themes and references, while others are quieter and contemplative. Their juxtaposition to one another is expressed by varying sizes and placements in the exhibition space to suggest dynamic movement and gesture. Sculptural aspects are incorporated to include a tactile, physical reference to the ideas encoded within their respective images. A stray collection of toothpicks and a Star Ferry token are examples of these aspects, placed carefully on the edges of their photograph’s frames. Different colors, tones, and exposures in my images are utilized to form the visual tempo of the work invoked in the viewer. In The Things We Remember color and subject ‘modules’ shift between lush greenery and forever-cloudy skies of Hong Kong’s hills to its dark and claustrophobic hallways and alleys and all the unseen places in-between. Mixed with intimate portraits of my father interacting with spaces from his past, this series recreates a journey through my father and I’s experiences with the city.
@ sam_ g_lo samuello.myportfolio.com
Samuel Lo
I embrace photography as a tool of documentation, subversion, and distortion as essential properties in my images. Illusionistic and poetic motifs in my work are inspired by the reflection-laden photographs of Paul Sepuya and Lee Friedlander to the metaphysical and semiotic explorations of the Postimpressionists and Cubists.
66
