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Sam Montalbetti
Friends

Photographing my friends, I explore themes of intimacy, trust, friendship and exploration while giving space for viewers to reflect on the importance of friendship and support systems, and also the uncanny ability of photography to freeze that which is in constant motion.

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My work explores photography as a site for intuition and curiosity to guide my actions and how this behaviour relates back to the medium itself. Working in series’, these actions bring me to spaces of research and creation that are new to me, and though each project has its own conscious research and reflection, I’ve noticed intuition and curiosity play a key role in the research as well as operation. I see my work as a form of psychedelic magic, thinking about psychedelic from its etymology; psyke meaning the mind, the soul or spirit, and delos meaning to make visible or to uncover. This relates to the operation of photographic apparatuses as well as viewing; photography is constantly showing me things in ways I haven’t seen. My interest in magic is two fold, stemming from Charlotte Cottons 2015 book titled “Photography is Magic”, where she makes a great connection to close up, illusion based magic and photography. I’m interested in the similarities between the roles of the artist and the Witches and Wisemans’ mystical use of magic, that is to use their spells and supernatural abilities to help people deal with their anxieties and insecurities in life.