Sam Wang
114 Vineyard Road, Clemson, SC 29631
864.654.5456
stwang@clemson.edu
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Sam Wang was born in Beijing and grew up in Hong Kong. He attended college in the US and received his MFA degree in photography from the University of Iowa in 1966, after which he joined the faculty at Clemson University in South Carolina teaching art photography.
Through the years his work has evolved from multiple imagery to photo-silkscreen, to using cameras that he constructed, a variety of alternative printing processes, and digital.
Much of his recent work combines digital imagery with alternative printing processes: platinum/palladium, cyanotype, and gum.
Beginning in 1978, he made round images with cameras that he built in order to include the entire image circles of wide-angle lenses. Originally designed to capture intimate landscapes of the American Southeast, these varied in sizes from 11x14", 5x7", 4x5", to 120 medium format.
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#3prints #1 to 9 - contact-printed 22x22cm, unmounted, platinum-palladium prints on 100% cellulose paper - 750 Euros
Sam writes: "Much of my work is about
discovery through observation. Without observation there can
be no perception, and without perception there can be no interpretation.
In directly confronting my subjects, be it a rock or a stream,
I hope to give the viewer an intimate dialog with the landscape
cloaked under the illusion of objectivity.
Photography to me means observation, exploration, and discovery:
I enjoy the search for answers. I also believe in giving myself
a lot of freedom to play with ideas and techniques. It was during
this sort of play over twenty years ago that I discovered my
present format. Intrigued by the extra coverage of a wide angle
lens, I put it in front of a much larger than intended piece
of film: mating a medium format lens with 5x7" sheet film.
I was toying with the "shoot now, decide later" idea
of capturing "the whole thing" on the negative, and
cropping to the aspect ratios best fit the subject during printing.
The inherent beauty and integrity of the uncropped round image
became evident immediately and I have been using this format
ever since. The immersive confrontation, the implied objectivity
of showing everything, and the symbolism of the circle all contribute
to the image. The making of my own tools also allows them to
become almost extensions of my arm and of my consciousness.
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These images are less about the
subject matter, but more about perception: what's important is
not what we see but how we see it, feel it, and perhaps, dream
it.
I've also been interested for a long time in intermixing scenes
from different times and places to suggest something beyond the
surfaces and the obvious. With digital images, I can freely manipulate
and use subjective colors, colors that don't have to be perfect
or correct. A great variety of methods are on hand to connect
and interlace images in the digital arena, much superior to physically
cutting and taping pieces of Kodalith films together as I once
did for photo-silkscreen. Other than that, I do not hold any
central theme or philosophy with my imagery, except that there
be a hint of ties to photographic reality and that each is a
new vehicle for discovery.
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Some of the methods and processes
I've been using to output these digital images include cyanotype,
gum-bichromate, platinum/palladium, vandyke brown, and a combination
of some of these, especially as in two and three-color separations.
These are all very old photographic processes that require a
great deal of time, patience, labor, and waste of materials,
and they are all nearly irreproducible; that is, the end products
are unique, one of a kind, prints. It's interesting to note that
such extremely task and skill oriented processes seem to complement
the fast and powerful digital tools we now have, in more ways
than one."
Sam Wang
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