LC: So do you start with a concept for a photograph, and then create your sketches around that concept? Or does it all sort of happen at once?
SST: It never starts with just one thing. I’m obsessed with prints and with the darkroom, so a lot of times the idea comes out of a print itself. I use some snapshots, but there are others that are created through ideas that I have staged, and those are what I call “key pictures,” because they reference something that I constructed in front of me to represent something of importance – they are standing in for a truth. But then when life changes, truth changes with it, and I find new things in the images, reusing them within other works.
For artist Sara S. Teigen, this process is not just a means to an end – it is a vital practice for understanding the world around her. By drawing and sketching her internal thoughts, Teigen grounds herself in the present, feeling the wonder that comes with experiencing something new for the very first time. As an evolution of her previous project, Fractal State of Being, where she first began combining her drawing with photography, her new work is titled Interior Landscape – an ode to the way she maps and constructs her inner thoughts in the sketchbook she carries around with her everywhere, every day. After printing her photographs in the darkroom, she cuts out fragments of each image, reorganizing its tiny bits on the page in front of her. Using a fine-tip pen, Teigen then expands the scenes in each photograph even further across her canvas, melding the real image together with sketches from her imagination.
Seeing Teigen’s work at this year’s Unseen Amsterdam was a breathtaking experience. Extending her practice of intricately drawing in and around the cut-outs of her photographs, she created a massive temporary mural directly on the wall of her installation, piecing together an extended road map for the constellation of works that hung there. In this interview, Teigen speaks about her impetus for creating this dynamic work, how she began integrating photography with drawing, and how she hopes to impact an audience with her projects.
LensCulture: While your work incorporates photography, there’s so much more to it, and I think it really demonstrates your artistic abilities in a ton of other areas. But I do wonder, how did you start exploring with photography specifically, and what did those first experiments look like?
Sara S. Teigen: I think it’s a cliché story, but I was in a very dark place. Everyone around me was figuring out what to do with their lives, and I just couldn’t figure it out myself. I had this very dark year, and in that darkness, I found a tiny red camera that was my father’s when he was young. I started exploring with it, taking self-portraits and staging myself.
LC: And at what point did you start integrating illustrations into your photographic work?
SST: Drawing was always a major part of my life, but it was always incredibly private. In school, I had problems paying attention unless I was simultaneously scribbling – when I drew as I was learning something, I would internalize all the information. Then one day I was doing a photography workshop, and the instructor saw me drawing while he was talking and he told me I wasn’t allowed to just photograph anymore – I had to mix the two together. At first I refused, because my drawing is so personal that I thought it would feel like being naked in front of everyone. But he actually forced me to try it, and that’s when I started integrating the two into sketchbooks.