Sam Forsyth-Gray is a Melbourne based photographer, who has recently completed a Bachelor of Photography at Photography Studies College. His work is concerned with ideas of family, memory, and the human condition. Interested in the merging of fine art and documentary visual languages – often using archival images alongside his own images – the process is fluid and experimental. With a special interest in the application of found images within contemporary art practice, his work seeks to create new ways of both seeing and understanding these objects by dissecting and intersecting photographic surfaces, through collage and juxtaposition, and through his own photographic responses.
On the Sea Stands a Rock
This project stems from a recent discovery of both familial historical archives and multiple collections of unknown vernacular photographs. The work forms a project that uses various techniques and processes to explore the idea of physicality, materiality, and the idea of a photograph existing as a physical object. My own photographs respond to the found imagery, creating a varied and experimental flow of works that seek to address and define my interpretation of the photographic object.
Overall the work aims to create conversations between new and old images in a way that links them together cohesively both visually and conceptually. The use of traditional collage and juxtaposition along with my own photographic responses seek to keep the work relevant in our increasingly over-saturated world of photographic images. Unravelling stories from these collections have allowed me to not only explore my own family history but to look at ideas of lost memory and the lack of identity that comes with these abandoned family albums.
To view more of Sam Forsyth-Gray’s work please visit their website.