Inside the Photographer’s Studio - Sofia Sacomani
Nice View, 2017
October 30th, 2022
By Anna Prudhomme @annaprudhomme
At the end of a long corridor, between a recording studio and an artist atelier, is Argentinian photographer Sofia Sacomani’s workshop. Bright red, triangular glasses propped on her nose, she hastily opens the door before apologising for the mess I might encounter. The studio is covered up with printed images, paint, plaster, and a ton of different toolboxes. She picks up a Coca-Cola bottle and sits down on the brown velvet couch, ready to talk me through her complex and fascinating art process. She talks fast, with a charming Spanish accent and begins: “I never do digital, I try to push the boundaries between the actual process of printing and analog photography…”.
Light at Home I, 2021
Light at Home II, 2021
Sofia’s work explores the relationship of photography and human memory, using analogue techniques with an experimental approach. Best known for her works on alternative ways of printing and darkroom experiments, her series You were there, was shown at the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2020.
After attending a fashion design university in Buenos Aires, she moved to Europe, dreaming of integrating herself into London’s best fashion schools. Moving to the UK was always the plan for Sacomani, but photography was not. Her introduction to the medium came at a flea market in Majorca, where she bought an analogue camera for her younger sister who was studying film back in Argentina. When she returned she never gave the gift and started capturing everything around her instead. “I suppose, the camera was keeping me close to my family, my sister. And somehow I started using the camera to remember,” she explains. After getting rejected from taking a masters in fashion, the following year Sofia went to Camberwell College of Arts’ to study printmaking.
“The camera was keeping me close to my family, my sister. And somehow I started using the camera to remember”
During holidays spent in the south of France in 2016, Sofia realised her inclination for taking pictures of more abstract compositions. Visiting architect Eileen Gray's house on the French Riviera, she began taking abstract close-ups, appreciating the house through the lens of her camera. Walking down the cliff on which the house was located, she lay on the beach when a wave came and splashed her belongings. She picked it all up quickly, hoping neither water nor sand would have affected her precious film camera. Once back in London, she sent her film to be developed and was fascinated at the result: some pictures had become very abstract with magenta and purple tones, others had watermarks and the grains of sand marked the images with green spots. “All of that was very intriguing. I liked it and started making collages to play with them,” said Sofia. This accident led to her first artistic series, Abstract Waves.
Abstract Waves, 2017
Taking pictures continuously was also a way for the artist to counter her bad memory. “I never remember things…I always felt as if I’m going to have Alzheimer's at some point,” explained Sofia, before adding that talking with a friend a few days ago she realised her way of remembering seemed different from other people’s. “I don't remember things in a literal way. For me, a memory is a very abstract composition of light or a close-up, and that’s what triggers memory in me.”
That is also why Sofia’s work almost never displays human bodies. “A body is already representational, telling ‘that is a person’, and I want to leave an open space in my work, for both the viewer and the artist, to explore what you're seeing and how you interpret what you're seeing,” said Sofia. Our ability to recollect memory thus stands as the driving inquisition throughout her practice, linking the act of looking to the one of thinking. With her pictures, the young artist creates “gaps in time”, fragmented moments triggering in each of us something from the past. In her own words, it’s “the capture of memory through ephemeral moments” that has become the essence of her work.
“I want to leave an open space in my work, for both the viewer and the artist, to explore what you're seeing and how you interpret what you're seeing…”
On the entrance table, pencils, colour rubbers and a pack of Fuji colour film are all jumbled up among some green tea incense and a scratch card. “We had to redo the whole place, it was full of rubbish as they used it as a storage space,” explains Sofia who found the studio right before Covid hit and spent the lockdown renovating it with her boyfriend. Enormous test strips are stuck on the studio door, her unique way to compare colours and find the perfect combination. In fact, images are displayed on almost every corner of the studio, helping the Argentine photographer organise her effervescent projects. Hung over her office, between a family portrait and a cat painting, are all the images linked to ongoing series that she needs to keep an eye on. Over the couch are all the finished compositions of work, and on another wall are the negatives she plans to keep on using.
Patagonia Series (You were there), 2019
Books can also be found all over her studio space. I first lay eyes on a Wolfgang Tillmans book entitled Abstract Pictures. “It's funny because most of his abstract images are actually from discarded pieces of work he found going through his archive or tidying up his studio,” explains Sofia passionately.
In fact, the famous German artist used his discarded tests that had light leaks to create a body of work— a practice Sofia identifies with very much. It was whilst doing her Masters at Camberwell that she first discovered I don't want to get over you a large-scale abstract picture of a blue sky interspersed with gestural green trails, for which Tillmans won the 2000s Turner Prize. “The way he manipulated this image to become some sort of memory, triggering something into the viewer’s eye, is really the interesting side of his work,” said Sofia.
“Sometimes I get so much into my work that I forget to go see exhibitions, or even read books - which are my main source of inspiration.”
I then noticed a big book entitled Memory edited by Ian Farr and filled with neon highlighter and sticky notes. “This is one of my bibles,” exclaims Sofia about this anthology investigating artistic relationships to memory. I then find a notebook filled with writings about exhibitions, with the associated leaflets and exhibition hand-outs glued on it. But there have been times, she did not write anything, admits Sofia, before adding, “Sometimes I get so much into my work that I forget to go see exhibitions, or even read books - which are my main source of inspiration”.
At the studio, she usually plays the Argentinian radio she listened to growing up. “It's funny because by the time I arrive, it’s so early there that I get to lend an ear to very random radio shows… And, oh, of course, the first thing I need is a coffee, I always get it on the way to the studio because otherwise I'm moody all day!” she exclaims. Her day’s also include outfit changes, as her practice is crafty and she always ends up getting dirty and dusty.
Why should anyone be frightened by a hat?, 2018
Experimenting is Sofia’s true passion. Mentioning an old series of six abstract black and white prints hanging on the wall, she starts explaining the process: “I screen printed in acetate and exposed the images, some of which actually had ink, into photographic papers in the dark room. So basically, it’s screen print made into photographs!” She follows by showing a picture of an old car printed on expired colour paper from the 70s, bought in the street in Hackney for £1. Then came some photographic transfers on aluminium, some other screen prints on metal, dibond and Perspex.
Building set design on the side of her artistic practice, Sofia collects materials that she recycles by using them to trying out different methods of printing. She usually spends the day experimenting in a trial-and-error process. Lately, she printed one picture without a developer exposing it for eight minutes straight before fixing it with a photographic fixer. But most of her work happens in the dark room, where she goes back and forth until she’s happy with her prints. “I do some tricks there, with holes in the paper, for instance, exposing some part of an image more than the rest,” explains Sofia before heading to show me the prints she had made for her next show, titled Collateral Memory.
Invited by the art collector Niloufar Bakhtiar Bakhtiari, Sofia has memorialised Avenue Studio, a Grade II listed building where painters such as Edward Poynter lived. Exploring the relationship memory has to the locations it might inhabit, Sofia produced a body of textural close-ups before the space got renovated. Over the past few days she has been experimenting with plaster, using the same recipe they initially used in the building, to frame and alter her prints. “I feel some images are not ready yet… they need something more physical! I always try to have an imprint, to mark them, in order to make them truly mine !” explain Sofia, not yet satisfied with her experiments.
Alpha Twin I, 2022
Alpha Twin II, 2022
The young artist never seems to stop. Burning the candle at both ends, Sofia has to keep herself from going to the studio on the weekends as she’s eager to start working on a new project shot on a Greek island this summer. Doing a short residency in Patmos, she got interested in its mythology and one particular legend that explains that the island rested at the bottom of the sea and was only visible when Selene the Moon Goddess would shine over it. She explored that myth through photography, slowly incorporating some of her own body parts, dipping her toe into trying out figurative imagery.
She ended up going to Turkey, in Kapikiri a small mountain village in Mount Latmos where the myth of Selene originally took place. In the middle of beautiful volcanic formations, she visited the temple of the Moon Goddess’s lover and started collecting pieces of rocks and sediment. “A flat image is not enough any more, I’m trying to give the photograph a materiality, so that it really becomes an object,” explains Sofia. “Maybe it will become this imaginary landscape where those two places meet?” daydreams the Argentine artist.
Cactus on Metal, 2020
“A flat image is not enough any more, I’m trying to give the photograph a materiality, so that it really becomes an object.”
Continuously altering and integrating layers of thought, material, and space to her images; Sofia Sacomani’s star is just rising in the photography community. But with her photo-literacy and wide-ranging use of medium, she is pushing the boundaries of what we expect from abstract and figurative imagery. Her playfulness, and un-precious stance on analogue photographic practice making her an artist for the future.
Sofia in Her Studio by Laurence Trolet, 2022
About Sofia Sacomani
Born in Argentina & based in London, Sofia Sacomani is a multi disciplinary artist and set designer. She is founder and director of the The Looney Studio.
Her practice combines analogue photography with printmaking processes such as screenprinting and transfer to deconstruct and create alternative images.