Sam Stephenson


AVAILABLE WORKS

It began at TAFE, hobbling on crutches with a broken ankle from skateboarding. It began in a neighbour’s darkroom as a teenager. Now, twenty years later, Sam Stephenson returns to the analogue source, printing his latest project in a Marrickville darkroom.

“You Can’t Miss What You’ve Never Had” is the culmination of a ten-year period, a direct continuation of his 2015 exhibition ‘Fake Nostalgia’. With a camera always at hand, Stephenson’s approach has evolved from spontaneity to a more posed, contemplative practice, yet his focus remains unwavering: his peers, his friends, his community.

His mother observed his subject is “the common man going about their everyday life.” This exhibition brings that world to light—a world of skateboarding, music, and art. It’s a archive of a decade, reflecting on absent friends, new friends, and the quiet poetry of friends holding cats. By projecting onto light-sensitive paper, he creates nothing too ordinary, but something deeply personal: a captured history, made by hand, against the digital grain.