Sarah Small

New York-based photographer Sarah Small creates dark, funny, psychological images.

And she’s always fighting
the bear.

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Chief Magazine: Coming from a family of artists and writers, do you feel like a career in the arts was a natural progression?

Sarah Small: I guess, yeah.  It was pretty straightforward.  I played the cello when I was younger, and when I was thirteen, I discovered photography at summer camp. I’ve been passionate about taking pictures ever since.

You started out photographing your little sister.  Are you still taking a lot of pictures of her now?

I don’t see her that much now, so I haven’t shot an image of her in a while. She was always around when I was in high school and she was always available and cooperative.  She was really fun to shoot because she has bright red hair and tons of freckles. The last picture I shot of her was with a monkey named Norman and that picture’s on my site.

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What made you decide to take a Polaroid of yourself every day?  That’s a huge commitment.

My freshman year of college, I took a photo class where we had lectures about different artists every week.  There’s a woman named Martha Madigan who took a photograph of herself, her husband, and I think the same tree every month for ten years.  Something like that.  I found it fascinating, and that day, I went back to my room and I just started.  It’s been almost ten years.

So, I have to ask, have you ever missed a day?

Yes.  Of course.  But it’s fun because since it’s my project, all the rules are self-inflicted.  This is going to sound ridiculous, but I apologize to the Polaroid and my project  if I miss a day.  I take however many pictures I need to make up for days I’ve forgotten.  Then, I write something on the Polaroid about how it’s a “fake” picture.  

So you have place-fillers.

I’m only human.  I’ve missed at least 100 days.

In 10 years, that’s not too bad.  What fascinates you about that?  The subtleties of the aging process?

Well, that’s kind of what I thought it was gonna be like at the beginning.  When I started the project, I was taking pictures that were all exactly the same: position, pose, hair, everything, which got extremely boring.  And because of the quality of the Polaroid itself, it’s really difficult to see aging and skin, texture, subtle expression, and mood change.  There’s sort of a soft wash over the Polaroid.  So it’s not the best medium for that.  

When I started getting bored with the project, I began taking pictures of myself in different positions and also incorporated other people in the project by asking different people to take my picture every day.  I still try to do that; I really like it. I figure out the theme or concept and then they’ll take the picture.  Or sometimes I’ll say, “you decide.”

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On your bio page, they’re all over the walls.
Are they still there?

Yeah, that was my old bedroom.  They were there ‘til about three or four years ago.  Eventually they just started to make me crazy and drove whatever new lover I would come back to the house with crazy as well.  Now they’re archived in boxes.

Your pictures are powerfully colorful.  Do you find inspiration in colors you see, or go through phases with favorites?

People are actually always saying that, but I don’t consciously think about color that much when I’m shooting.  I’m more concerned with the subject matter and keeping the background as simple as possible.  I do things that are saturated and bold, but there’s not too much conscious decision-making about the palate that I use.  

I started out using single subjects, but then found that I was more interested in juxtaposing different experiences or moods or environments so that each would seem completely out of context.  I wanted to see how that would mess with viewers’ minds, or my mind, rather.

I also wanted to figure out why I’m interested in marrying different things like that.  It unfolded that I was obsessed with photographing animals, dead or alive, and children and nude women… older men and women too, and the interplay between the different elements.  I like scars and bruises a lot.

I love the picture with the bruise and the baby.  Hell of a contrast.  Do you design your life that way? Dress colorfully?  Cowboy boots and prom dresses?

I wear black, white, and grey everyday.  I’m actually a plain dresser, but my house is extremely colorful.  I have one room that’s all violet and my bedroom is bubble -gum pink and it’s super fucking  princess-y and girly.  I have lots of tchotchkes and sculptures and animals and things that I’ve collected from my travels.

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In addition to animals, you seem to have a thing for identical twins.  Where do you find them all?

Well, funny you should ask.  I found a twins convention that’s held the first week of August every year and I’m actually leaving for it on Friday.  I’ve gone 5 years in a row.  I came across it randomly online and it said that there would be 3,000 identical twins, dressed identically to their twin, walking around.  I couldn’t not go; it’s too trippy!  Now I know a bunch of them.

Weird!  You know, a lot of your pictures made me laugh out loud.  Is that the goal?

That actually makes me really happy.  I love that.  Definitely, I mean, they’re dark, but I want them to be equally hilarious.  I want them to be jarring, but not in a way that’s like, “flip to the next picture,” but more like, “what the fuck is going on?”

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Like the monkey feeling the boob?

Ha, yeah.  That’s the picture I have in my bedroom.  It’s the only one.  

How has your photography changed over the years?

I think my photographs have gotten more complicated psychologically, and I guess they’ve also matured a little bit. I’ve been able to take more of an interest in the photos I’ve shot further along in my life. They’ve stuck with me the longest and are a point of reflection.  

Specifically, the relationships between people and the number of people I’ll put in a frame have changed. I also started to realize that I couldn’t get the exact shot I wanted at any given moment just because it was there, so now, if I see someone I want to photograph, I always ask them for permission, unless I’m in a particularly shy or tender mood.  Also, I have built up a bit of a model list.  I find them on Craigslist or on the subway.

Do you work with the same people over and over?

I go in phases.  I’m currently obsessed with a new girl, Laura.  She’s amazing. She looks like she’s 55 and 18 years old at the same time.  She’s the girl who’s doing a backbend in the picture with the older woman, and the one with the big blue bird.  I shot this new girl, Molly, this weekend and I think I’m going to now become obsessed with her.

Yeah, I like to find muses and I like to bring them with me wherever I shoot.  I’m trying to bring Molly to the twins festival this weekend. I like to work with someone who knows what I’m doing stylistically and take them to places that fascinate me.  

I direct a lot when I shoot.  I never sit back and wait for them to do stuff, I’m very talky.

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Do you change or enhance your pictures digitally?

I used to think that was illegal under my own rules for photography.  When I started making pictures, I never even cropped anything, not even a little bit.  I was proud of leaving borderlines when printing from a negative.  But I’ve started to realize that digital work is a second process, and I definitely tend to each picture digitally.  I generally go in and make a couple specified level adjustments and saturate things.  Very rarely do I actually move a whole figure.  Once I learn Photoshop more proficiently, I’ll probably take command in a way that will be really interesting.  I’m actually looking at doing that with some pictures I took this past weekend.

So, tell me about that.  I know ostriches were involved.

I had a guy respond to an ad in my contact section that said, “If you have any ostriches or cool animals and are between the ages of 1 and 500, I’m looking for new and exotic subject matter.”  I got this email from this person who said that he had ostriches and hens and bunnies and turkeys and all this crazy stuff.  We talked and it turned out that he was interested in doing a project and being really creative.  The guy I’m dating came out too. He was on his last leg of a circus tour and I ended up photographing him with an amazing old grandfather character and Molly on top of him.  I’m loving the pictures.

Circus life!  What a wealth of inspiration.

Yeah! We do totally different stuff, but actually…also some similar stuff.  He’s a musician and I sing in a women’s’ Bulgarian choir.

Are you Bulgarian?

No, I just love, love, love the music.  A few years ago I was on Craigslist looking for something musical to do.  I wanted to be around music and I saw a posting for this audition.  There was recently a tragic breakup of the group, though, so I started my own quartet and we’re actually performing at the Spiegeltent this coming Sunday.

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What’s your weapon of choice?

I shoot with a Canon 5D right now and I like it, but I still would like to shoot with something with slightly more resolution.  I’m working on a show in Winnipeg right now, and I’ll be printing at 26x40 for it.  I really like that size for my work.  It’s right on the edge of not being sharp enough.  It’s not pixelly yet, but I feel like if I’d ever like to go bigger, I’d like to do so without having to sacrifice quality.  Cameras shooting at higher resolutions are bigger, though, and I’d rather shoot more freely and sacrifice the craft just a little bit.

If your work had a soundtrack, what would it be?

Music actually inspires me more than other visual art. I generally like music that’s very rhythmic and beat-driven, that’s layered with harmonies and has a lot of builds and releases.  That could be rock, folk-Bulgarian, goth, industrial, grunge…

If you weren’t taking pictures, would you be making music?

I’d be a singer and a hammer dulcimer player.  I’m actually trying to start a band right now.  I want to get some of the compositions I’ve been working on--heavy, crazy, circus-y stuff  performed by live musicians in a three or four part vocal harmony.

I read that you’ve taught photography classes before.  What was the most important lesson you wanted to impart to your students?

Freedom!  To express exactly what you wanted to express.  I did a dream workshop with them that I really liked a lot.  I’d try to get them to remember and record their dreams and then figure out how to depict them photographically.

Do you do that?

I haven’t written them down in a while, but my dreams are my inspiration for all the songs I write.  They’ve inspired some of my photographs too.  I started finding icons that would come up over and over.  For example, I was always dreaming about bears.  I realized that this represents some kind of relationship to my personal power.  

Whenever I was disconnected from myself and not feeling confident and empowered, I would dream of a vicious, bloody-mouthed bear in my house.  Scary.  But when I was happy and doing what I wanted to be doing, I would have dreams of cartoon bears, cute bears.  Now I’m trying to confront the bear all the time.  I have bears all over my house.

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I’m going to start paying attention to my dreams.  Do you ever take those themes and use them to create a series?

I’m most interested in making a piece that joins pictures sharing some kind of a psychological relationship, and I actually prefer not to show images that visually reference each other. That’s been a really hard thing for me, because I get people asking me to define my style.  It’s a continual series that keeps moving.
 
Like you seem to do.  So what do you have coming up?

The show in Winnipeg is exciting because I’ll have 8 prints in it.  I’m showing with another photographer, Elaine.  I have another show coming up in Chelsea, and two pieces in the fall group show in the Claire Oliver Gallery.  

Nice. Busy, busy!

I am constantly busy.  Always busy.

Website

www.sarahsmall.com

Photos of Artist
Tyler Campbell Wriston

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