Sam Contis
Artist, Senior Critic in Photography
Yale School of Art
Born in 1982 in Pittsburgh, Pa., USA
BFA, New York University, MFA, Yale University
Project
Phases
I am an artist whose practice centers around photography and moving image. During my time at the Wissenschaftskolleg, I will be working on a new book project titled Phases. In this project I am interested in the camera’s distinctive ability to measure time—across fractions of a second, days, and years. The book is based on a series of photographs and a three-channel film of runners in the landscape. In the film, three young women run a five-kilometer race through the countryside at different times of day: one in the morning, one at midday, and one in the evening. Each runner occupies her own frame, and each run is a single uninterrupted take, the distance itself being its own measure of time. The black-and-white photographs, made over the course of five years, are intimate studies of the faces of teenage runners as they approach or cross the finish line of a race. In my work, making books is a means to explore the relationships between images, in terms of rhythm, narrative, and form. I will also be researching a new film project, currently in the early stages of development, drawing on material from the archives of a late 19th-century writer and naturalist.Recommended Reading
Contis, Sam. Deep Springs. MACK, 2017.
Lange, Dorothea, and Sam Contis. Day Sleeper. MACK, 2020.
Contis, Sam. Overpass. Aperture, 2022.
Publications from the Fellow Library
Contis, Sam (New York, NY, 2022)
Overpass - Sam Contis Overpass