Samantha Contis’ photographs are set in and around her hometown of rural Pennsylvania and her current residence in Connecticut. The photographs speak of the ever-evolving notion of place. The void depicted (sometimes literally) in the photographs evokes a bleak melancholy that is at odds with the “picture perfect” beauty of the landscapes. Contis’ images explore the divide between our imaginings of a place and the actuality of the place itself. Through the passing of seasons, years, and other inescapable cycles, the photographs reveal the lingering feelings of expectations left unfulfilled.
Simple and reductive, the spare images give way to a sweeping view of the pastoral landscape where specificity comes in tiny details – small robins under a single towering tree, two empty ladders, a bare tree on an island of ice, a pair of geese resting beside a perfectly round pond, and a lone silo hidden behind an immense pine.
Samantha Contis was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1982 and received her BFA in Photography & Imaging and Art History from New York University in 2004. She was selected by Art + Commerce as one of eleven emerging photographers worldwide for PEEK2007. Her work will be published in Capricious magazine, October 2007. She is currently enrolled in the MFA program in photography at Yale University.
Tierney Fellowship Show
June 1, 2007 – July 2, 2007
