Sam Cornwell is a photographer with a degree both in Photography and Photographic Art and is now an owner and creator of The Taxi Office Art Gallery situated in Hawick.
Sam started off his career by practising pictorial photography, he took photographs of mainly landscapes and portraits. He took spectacular clean photographs either with lots of detail or very little detail but no distractions, he got awarded for some of his work. However, it did not mean anything to him, and now he describes those works as 'crappy'.
Due to his hatred towards his pictorial photography he needed to find his voice as an artist somewhere else, so he decided to go to University as he felt like he missed out in his earlier years: there, he fell in love with photography even more and truly changed as a person. He discovered the 'Dark Room' the traditional way of printing photographs by hand and found himself very good at it, he decided that that was exactly his voice.
After Sam found his voice in the dark room he wanted something more, therefore, he discovered wet plate collodion and continued using it until now.
For a Wet Plate Collodion, large format cameras are used - they are empty on the inside, there is only a lens on the outside, images are created onto plates. The camera exposes light onto these plates; which are unreproducible which makes them original.
That still wasn't enough, as a developing photographer he continuously searches for ways to widen his skills. Sam moved on to Condensed Landscapes where he used a simple digital camera which satisfied him due to the different approach it had. Using only really large lenses, to create images very, very close up, he managed to take 3 photographs in 3 years. He took 1 photo a year to create this collage of 3 photos that he took at the same time in the same place but a year apart, he did not take ANY other photos during those 3 years.
Moving on, he came across a deal in a supermarket where one disposable camera cost only £1 each, along with free development. There were 127 Disposable Cameras for sale and Sam did not want to waste a chance as great as that one, so he bought all 127 of them. The deal was that all of the cameras had to be developed in 9 months, 127 cameras with 27 photos to use in each one makes around 3,400 photos to take. His decision was to simply take them everywhere and photograph everything. One of his ideas was to expose all 27 photos from one camera onto one image.
Astrophotography was the next step for Sam. He took a sensational photograph of Venus passing the sun which won an award.
Then came in the Tacky Red Cameras, for no reason at all, he started collecting red cameras which he then made a sculpture with that stays in his gallery in Hawick.
After a long journey through the world of photography, his current works are extraordinarily different from where he started in the beginning. Fugacious: Addressing Ephemerality is a work in progress where he uses 300 mirrors hanging in a room with a laser which represents gratification meaning; instead of taking a picture to post on the internet in desire to get likes, have a look in the mirror.
To me, Sam Cornwell is a fantastic inspiration, his growth as an artist motivates into constantly expecting more from myself.
