Samuel Scully - Going West

Samuel Scully is an early career photographic artist based in Poneke / Wellington. Concerned with the world around him, Samuel aims to decipher the underlying rhythms that contribute to our shared understanding of lived experience. Primarily working within the modern tradition of ‘post documentary' Samuel uses the interplay of subject and perspective to create new narratives in his long form photographic projects. Going West aims to act as a poetic reconstruction of the known rhythms of development in young men's lives within rural Aotearoa / New Zealand.

Our world shifts and changes around us, everything happening all at once. Sometimes the changes are small, nearly inconceivable. Sometimes they are much larger, they shake us awake, gasping, now rudely awakened from the routines and rhythms that had previously rocked us to sleep. There is an innate sensibility in our relationship with place. We are expected to be, to achieve, to follow the history of the places we settle in. Going West seeks to pay careful attention to the routines of place and the young men that are its inhabitants, and through its contemplation, offers a new narrative for the young men pictured.