Lucas Samaras: Digital Portrait Photographer

Photo-transformations, 1976

Lucas Samaras, born September 14, 1936 was born in Kastoria, Greece. He immigrated to the United State with his family when he was 11 years old. He attended Rutgers University on a scholarship. Before he started working with photography, he painted, sculpted and was a performance artist. After graduating Rutgers, he attended Columbia's graduate department for art and in 1959 he had his first exhibit. Two years later, one of his pieces was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art.

Photo-transformations, 1976

He manipulates his photographs by using razor blades, wire, beads, and gold to move the dyes around in what he calls "photo-transformations." What makes him unique as a photographer is that he usually uses himself as the main subject. He sculpts himself, photographs himself, and has even interviewed himself. He tends to do his own thing and not base his work off what others are doing. He somehow discovered that he could transform the dye on his photographs before they dried and create a new, novel, original piece of art.
In his photographs, he usually creates distorted portraits, and he is usually the subject. His lighting is usually eerie and dark and usually indoor light. It is hard to tell what his original photographs look like since they are so highly manipulated, but there is usually a portion of the photograph that you can tell is almost untouched; sometimes his hand, sometimes his face. The pictures sometimes look very psychedelic.

Photo-transformations, 1976

The concept in his photographs is that the self is complicated, distorted, yet he is obsessed with it. His photographs are physical copies of his ego, more like his super-ego. He has stated that he creates these types of photographs to "deconstruct and then reconstruct the self to auto-analyze the ego." It is as though he attempts to transform himself in ways that are physically impossible but digitally possible.
In my opinion, his work is very unique and original. It's eye-captivating. You look at his photographs and want to believe what you see, but you know it's in some form manipulated (whether that be with a blade or digitally). His photographs look like dream-scenes; distorted, colorful, unreal. They are shocking, sometimes scary, and are like his personality threw-up on a Polaroid. I think they are surrealistically stunning.

Photo-transformations, 1976