Untitled (01) by Summer HS winner Willamain Somma

Willamain Somma
Currently residing in New York, NY

Work Statement
I took the first photograph in this series at the UCross Foundation for the Arts in Clearmont, Wyoming this past March. There I was in the middle of nowhere with not much aside from cattle, horses, deer and endless rolling hills. I was desperate to make some interesting pictures during my artist residency but was feeling terribly stuck in my creative process. Aside from a few other artists who were busy working on their paintings and scripts and dances there was just the endless rolling hills and highways. And then there was me. So for the first time since I picked up a camera in high school I started photographing myself.

In the past I have always photographed other people knowing that every portrait was ultimately a reflection of myself. These pictures no longer disguise that fact. They are about me in the landscape, me in the world, and me in my creative process. They are about being stuck, trying to escape, existential angst, the whole narcissistic nine yards. I hope others like them but they please me and I’ve found that ultimately, that’s enough.

Bio
I am from the North Shore of Massachusetts and I went to a small high school in Maine where I spent many hours skiing, hiking in below freezing temperatures and making pictures. In 1993 I went to Bard College to study writing and literature and my last year there took a photo class with Larry Fink. The way Larry talked about photographs was thrilling to me and when I moved to NYC after graduation I began to use photography to identify the boundaries of my life and also to expand them, exploring places I never otherwise would have gone. I began a documentary project on crack addicts in the Lower East Side that taught me not only how to be a photographer (to navigate difficult subjects and grapple with all the issues inherent in documentary work) but about life and death and everything in between.

I now am a graduate of the Bard-ICP MFA Photography Program and find myself teaching others f-stops and shutter speeds and how to frame their subject. I realize that if my students can get past the technicalities of the medium to the place where their camera becomes an extension of themselves that is just the beginning. A life in photography is about letting the world be your teacher, allowing it to fill your frame in all its messiness and sadness and joy. I guess that’s what I’m getting at. My biography is incomplete. I’m still learning. Photography continues to be my greatest teacher. It has given me a way, a path, a door to understand the world and my place in it.