Your name
Tam Stockton
Place of birth
Berkeley, USA
Place where you live now
Providence, USA
3 words to describe you
curious, analytical, playful
Why do you take pictures?
I’m interested in the way that photography represents a purely visual representation of space and time. This representation has often been celebrated as a source of objectivity—a representation of singular reality—yet, 20 different people will look at an image and take away 20 different understandings. Photographic images—especially with the proliferation of social media as our primary form of interaction—still hold a privileged position of establishing the ‘real’ while simultaneously carrying with them, as Ariella Aïsha Azoulay has pointed out, the inevitability of multiple authorship. I take pictures because I believe that there is the potential to create photographs that offer a more empathetic reality, one that contends with critical issues while celebrating the ability of the medium to support the multiple authorship of viewers. Rather than regurgitating the same images that capital driven algorithms have popularized, there is the possibility to reshape the visual landscape that we currently inhabit. I don’t think that I’ve reached this point in my practice, but the promise of images made by artists like Barbara Ess, Lebohang Kganye, and Wouter Van de Woorde continue to push me out the door to make pictures!
Where do you get your inspiration?
Inspiration is often fleeting—there are periods of months where I can’t seem to make images at all. What I’ve found helpful in the past few years is to try and always have my camera with me. I can’t tell you how many images I’ve missed just because I didn’t think that I’d see anything interesting while driving to the supermarket. I think that, depending on how you work, that inspiration can come from anything given the right timing. As far as I can tell, the trick is being in a mindset where you don’t immediately shut down those ideas that seem pointless and that you have whatever you need in your practice at the ready to grab hold of that moment as quickly as possible.
Who are your influences?
Barbara Ess, Lebohang Kganye, Wouter Van de Woorde, Cortis & Sonderegger, Adou.
What determines the subject matter you choose?
It changes from project to project. I think that my most successful images have come from projects that were established only after a decent body of work had been made. I think that, as photographers, there can be a crushing weight put on us to conceptualize our work—maybe as a way to justify our images as art, as somehow different from what my uncle just posted on Instagram. I often find that if I have too many ideas about what sort of images can or cannot be in a body of work, I’ll end up shooting less often and the images will suffer. This isn’t always the case, but I think that the most important thing is being open to change within your subject matter, and being responsive when something that you weren’t initially thinking about begins to work.
What impact would you like your art to have?
I’m not really sure how to answer this question. I think an impact is such a lofty goal for any piece of art, especially in a form that is so much about communication—an act that necessitates multiple voices. I suppose if I had a specific hope for my work it would be that it could offer a space that encourages self-reflection on how and why we construct truth, as well as the weight of that act within our current political landscape.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
I love the images of Barbara Ess. I had the fortune of studying under her in undergrad and being her assistant for a time. I think in that period of getting to know Barbara I came to see the incredible care with which she represented her surrounding and the truly empathetic way that she constructed images. Going back to her pictures now, especially since her passing, I still get the sense that her empathy has a presence that is very much alive. What a gift to be able to look at an image and visit an old friend.
Is there anything you want to add?
Thank you all so much.

Memories from Before the World Fell Apart
Project statement

When we exhale the world falls apart. Though most of the time not in the grand way of medieval towers collapsing, fire raining from the sky, or great fissures opening in the stomach of city blocks - if only slightly, the gentle push of breath carries with it a force that pulls at the edges of our walls, softening the bonds that hold our bricks together. In every touch heat is exchanged, and heat is lost - every kiss demands a decay that leaves parts of us behind. But rather than viewing this exchange as a form of diminishment, might we learn to see this fracture as an opportunity for continuous empathetic redefinition?

Let us then build our images like the lines of an reimagined home traced in sand - a house to me, maybe to you, a box to some, a race car to others - the imperfections of its form, and the impermanence of its body, allowing space for redefinition and erasure beyond a singular voice. For even if we look out the windows at a world that seems to be inconsistent in everything but falling apart, perhaps we can sit together in my home, or perhaps your car, and share a breath.

tam stockton
@tam_stockton