Chuck Samuels: Becoming Photography / Chuck Samuels. Devenir la photographie

Photography is both my medium and my subject matter. Since my first exhibition in 1980, my various projects (most of which involved photographing myself) have brought different aspects of photography into question and have permitted me to explore my own personal history with the history of the medium. I use myself as a surrogate for photography and, by focusing the camera on myself, I am, in an absurd but rigorous manner, trying to ‘become’ photography. My work is, in many ways, an invitation to the viewer to engage in their own reconsideration of photography, its history, and its supposed link to the truth.

My 2021 publication, "Chuck Samuels: Becoming Photography" and it brings together 6 of these projects from 1991-2020. Lushly illustrated and available in both English and French versions, the publication was co-edited by Expression, Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe, Plein sud, centre d’exposition en art actuel à Longueuil and published by Kerber Verlag in Berlin and distributed world wide by Kerber Verlag's distribution partners. The book features essays by both Catalan artist, curator and critic Joan Fontcuberta and Montréal curator and critic Mona Hakim. The publication has been the object of a number of reviews and was short-listed for the 21/22 Deutscher Fotobuchpreis (German Photobook Award). My work has been shown extensively in North America and Europe, is in a number of museum collections internationally, and is represented (in the U.S.) by CLAMP in New York.