Today we’d like to introduce you to Sam Angel.
Hi Sam, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
What is your story?
I grew up on the edge of the Daniel Boone Natural Forest in the eastern hills of Kentucky. The majority of my childhood was spent forming a deep relationship with nature. My mother, like any good southern woman, often expressed herself through metaphor and this deeply shaped my visual foundation for how I would learn to make meaning of the world around me. As a kid, I loved photographs. I could spend hours with family albums. While I was interested in the stories, it was the compositions I soaked up, the tactile silvery black and white prints. And on occasion an image would come along that stepped out of a purely documentary stance with a lyrical visual value of a poem and I would delight in photography’s ability to tell stories and transport you.
I moved to Nashville in 2005 and studied photography at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film while it was still a liberal arts school. After graduating in 2012, I began working as a freelancer while working part-time helping manage the printing and photography facilities at Watkins. I balanced building a commercial portfolio while trying to maintain my own fine art practice.
My early freelance career was a slow build of food photography, art documentation, and a lot of random events. I worked for Eater Nashville photographing the interiors and food of new restaurants entering the scene. I photographed over 80 restaurant interiors over the course of four years. I went on to photograph for publications like Nashville Lifestyles, Okra Magazine, and continued to do food photography for various locations around Nashville. In 2017, Watkins brought me on as their rebranding photographer. I was to be the visual interpreter of the school’s identity and photograph the facilities, various events, and most importantly to make editorial portraits of the students, staff, and professors that would accompany interviews of their art making practices.
Now up until this point, I had not done a lot of studio portrait photography and I’ll be honest that it scared me. Food, art, and interiors do not have feelings about their looks. Photographing people, especially in a studio environment, holds a higher level of vulnerability for the person being photographed. I was nervous to step into this and with that resistance I knew it needed my attention. I wanted to capture the portraits with an editorial approach and signature type of lighting that I was hired again and again to recreate. I asked friends to sit for practice sessions and quickly learned a lot about myself as a photographer and the kind of container I could hold for an intimate and vulnerable setting as a person sat in the spotlight on the other side of the lens. After about the first ten portraits I had made for Watkins, I was fully in, I loved and to this day, love making portraits of people. My absolute favorite is when a person walks in and makes it known that they are not photogenic and then they leave the studio feeling confident and believing something different about their original statement. There is something about seeing a photograph of yourself in which you feel portrayed and feel seen fully as you, and I love helping people have that experience.
I have since won two Silver Addy’s for my commercial portrait work and been published in major books such as The World of Marty Stuart, and EXIT INN/ 50 years. These days, I am still a freelancer helping clients with commercial projects and art documentation. I continue to make fine art photographs and explore building my fine art practice through a poetic and intimate approach around topics of vulnerability, the human experience, and investigating new ways of seeing. You can find my work currently as part of a major art collection with Hutton Hotel and occasionally in local galleries. Lastly, I have been awarded an artist residency with Arcade Arts and will be working within the program through September into June of 2026. Visit my website to see both my commercial and fine art work and then stop by the artists studios with Arcade Arts to chat or join us for a second Saturday Art Crawl Downtown!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has been smooth and a struggle! Ha. I would say with any craft there are learning curves and one must put in the time and practice to keep growing. I now think of the smooth parts as flow and any struggle as the resistance needed to learn about myself, my craft and what areas need more of my attention. Being a freelancer requires one to hold a particular relationship with uncertainty while balancing being creative in that untethered framework. In the beginning, that path can be difficult to balance, but with time you find your way.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Commercially, I specialize in portraits, food, and interior photography. Clients often ask me to photograph their projects in a similar way I photograph food. This typically translates to clients wanting a particular type of mood, aesthetic or my specific approach to lighting. And then I would say helping people feel comfortable in front of the camera is a major part of what might set me apart. I am most complimented on my portraits and the connection or authenticity that people feel within those.
Within my fine art practice, I think what it is fascinating to me is that all of the elements of a particular aesthetic and type of moody lighting still play a role, but it steps away from a commercial lens and moves into a more grounded contemplation. Sometimes the two overlap in their intention and sincerity, and sometimes they sit in very opposite roles. Mostly, I love the visual language of photography in so many of its forms.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
Not really a outlook on industry but more of a what is ahead for me within the realm of photography.
I am beginning a passion project of developing a photography journal to be published out of Nashville, TN called Fieldwork. This will be a publication which features a highlighted photographer and open call selected guests. Each issue will showcase over 30 photographers of all skill levels and hopefully across the world. The first issue is set to be published later this year. The hope is to bring forward new visual conversations among photographers who work in the field of photography.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.samangelphotography.com
- Instagram: @sam_angel_photo
