Samantha Everton

Zoom: I read that you began to love photography after having seen a photo by Jerry Uelsmann, that you like Surrealism and Salvador Dalì and that among contemporary artists the one that fascinates you most is Miranda July. An unusual list, decidedly “non-scholastic” and unconventional. In addition, your life has been unusual, with a ten-year career as a hairdresser before studying photography. Can you tell us about this?

Samantha Everton: I suppose I have come upon photography in a fairly unconventional way. I see photography as an extension of all of my creative skills combined. I’ve always been creative with my hands and have worked with many different mediums, including hair. Essentially photography is a way of capturing my ideas where all my skills come together. I think that my non-academic background is one of the reasons

that my photography is accessible to a wide audience. The ideas in my art work come from universal feelings and emotions that don’t require

formal training in art to be appreciated.

Z.: What was the inspiration for the storyboard for “Vintage Dolls”?

S. E.: My upbringing was fairly unconventional: my family is made up of adopted and biological siblings from Thailand and Vietnam, and we grew up in a small country town. We stood out as a family, and I’ve always been very aware of people’s reactions to different cultures and nationalities and the unconventional. Nonetheless, my siblings were just that to me: my brothers and sisters. As a child, I saw no difference between us. The series “Vintage Dolls” is about how children react to culture and race and innocently re-enact adult behavior towards this through play.

Z.: Ours has been defined the era of globalization, but you focus on the mechanisms intrinsic to a multicultural and multiethnic society. You don’t think it is true that we are all equal?

S. E.: Cities always have sub-cultures within them, and even though we are unified on one level, on another level we identify ourselves by our culture. Children pick up on this through adult behavior and perpetuate this to the next generation. There is a sense of belonging and identity that is derived from our group or subculture. This is in danger of being lost in an era of globalization. I am not making a statement about how things should be, simply portraying the world as I see it, with all of its diversity.

Z.: In terms of your relationship between childhood and adulthood, I seem to gather that for you childhood is not just a time of growth, but rather

a level omnipresent even in the adult personality–that level capable of dreaming and imagining, and grasping a surreal dimension in everyday

life. Is this true?

S. E.: I think your childhood defines who you are as an adult. The largest impact on your childhood happens in a short period of time (approx. 10

years) but that impact lasts for life. My work is about the significance of that period in your life and how it impacts adult behavior. The reactions that I observe in people viewing my work shows me that we do still have the power to dream, even as adults. I see a lot of pleasure and a spark

in people’s eyes as they look at my vintage dolls series, no matter what background, culture, and race they come from; we are all linked through our childhoods and can relate to the images because of our common background of the child within us. I think there is a paradoxical element to my work, as I seek to illustrate our differences and common human elements in a single image.Z.: Do you already have in mind another photography project?

Will you work with children again?

S. E.: I Well I’ve broken all the rules in the past, working with children and animals, which can be quite a challenge! To date, to express my imagination, it has been important for children to be in my shoots to show the magic. I will not always necessarily use children to express this, but I find there is a lot of joy and connection from adults in using children to express adult feelings and situations. It resonates with our inner child and our adult knowledge.