by Romina Ciulli e Carole Dazzi
Sara Silks is an American photographer whose images seem to emerge gradually from the depths of memory. Her works resolutely explore themes ranging from fragility to vulnerability, from memory to contemporary issues, and are characterized by dreamlike, nostalgic atmospheres that awaken unexpected sensations. All this is achieved through an experimental, alternative methodological process that employs analog and digital tools, blending multiple techniques and employing diverse materials.
But, above all, it is her use of light that traces an unusual emotional path in the image, suggesting a thought, an inner stirring, a sensitive approach that directly impacts our way of seeing. Her photographs thus become true personal narratives, visual diaries, something intimate and reflective, something that triggers a profound and, at times, forgotten reaction. It’s enough to mention works such as Natsukashii (2024), Kaizen (2022), Prairiefire (2021), Warming Effects (2019), Leaving Terra Firma (2019), and Studies of Women (2017). We delve deeper into the discussion with the artist.
Your approach is characterized by the use of various technological tools, as well as alternative and experimental photographic processes. This practice seems to directly influence the creation of the image itself, contributing to its intrinsic meaning. Can you tell us how your creative process unfolds?
Sure! My creative process has evolved over time, but is usually inspired by a certain event or location or memory. I begin with a new photograph, or one from my archive, which becomes a substrate for further expression rather than a fixed endpoint. From there, I engage in a dialogue with the image using both digital tools and alternative photographic processes, allowing the method itself to shape the meaning of the work. A clear example is Encountering Isamu Noguchi. The piece began as a photograph of my daughter in a black dress standing near a large Noguchi block sculpture at our city’s museum.
While editing the image in Photoshop, I duplicated a layer, which shifted slightly due to an accidental movement of the mouse. That unexpected misalignment altered my perception of the image, revealing a new emotional and conceptual resonance. Recognizing its potential, I embraced the accident rather than correcting it. I ultimately printed the work in platinum palladium, a process whose material depth reinforced the image’s quiet gravity. The piece became a seminal work within that series and affirmed an important aspect of my practice: remaining open to serendipity and allowing chance, process, and material to actively participate in the final meaning of the image.
Memory is a recurring theme in your work, or rather, the nostalgic sensation which memory evokes. Take, for example, the Natsukashii series (2024), a Japanese term meaning “to feel nostalgia.” In these shots, infact, natural landscapes evoke sensations experienced in a specific moment. How did this project come about? And how much does the connection to the past influence your photographic production?
This series came about in another serendipitous way. I had received a package of Japanese washi samples, and decided to print on one of them with an image that I had taken of some of my late mother’s dried roses, enlarged with her magnifying glass. The result was unexpectedly beautiful, both materially and emotionally, which led me to experiment further by printing landscape images from my archive on the same paper. As I revisited those landscapes, I found myself instinctively cropping them, echoing the intimate, magnified view created by my mother’s glass.
That subconscious gesture became a quiet conceptual bridge between the images and an act of looking closely that carried both tenderness and loss. The poignancy of the original discovery inevitably impacted the subsequent images, giving them a sense of intimacy and preciousness. I believe we are the accumulation of our lived experiences. Memory, and in particular the emotional residue that it leaves behind, permeates my photographic practice. Rather than illustrating the past directly, my work allows it to surface poetically and subliminally, shaping how I see, frame, and hold onto fleeting moments.
Light represents another fundamental aspect of your aesthetic language, both on a technical and narrative level. In this way, every figure, every natural element portrayed becomes the subject of an emotional landscape in which the viewer feels a sense of belonging. Can you explain this choice?
For me, light is never just a technical condition, it is an emotional and temporal one. I’m drawn to light that is gentle, peripheral, and often fleeting, becoming light that suggests presence rather than spectacle. It allows figures and natural elements to exist in a state of quiet becoming, rather than being fixed or monumentalized. Narratively, light functions as a carrier of memory and feeling. It softens edges, reveals textures, and creates spaces where the viewer can enter without being directed. In this way, light becomes a kind of shared ground and an emotional landscape shaped as much by what is withheld as by what is shown.
I’m interested in how light can hold ambiguity and invite projection, allowing viewers to locate their own experiences within the image. Ultimately, this choice reflects my desire to create photographs that feel inhabited rather than observed. Through light, the work offers a sense of belong, not by telling a story outright, but by opening a space where emotion, memory, and perception quietly converge.
In your works there are many references to Japanese culture. Can you explain why?
I’ve been asked this question before, and with reflection, I think the influence stems from several formative experiences. Growing up, I was exposed early on to Asian art through my city’s museum, whose founding curator had a deep interest in the arts of the East. The collection is world-renowned, and encountering those works at a young age quietly shaped my visual sensibility long before I could articulate why they resonated so strongly. At the same time, I had a tumultuous childhood, and I found my way to yoga and Eastern meditation practices at a very early age, around ten. Those philosophies and disciplines offered grounding, reflection, and a sense of inner order during a period of instability.
They weren’t abstract ideas to me. They were lived practices that helped me navigate difficult terrain, and that sensibility continues to inform how I approach both life and art. I’m also deeply drawn to the Japanese relationship to language and perception, the way single words can hold entire experiences that Western culture often leaves unnamed. A word like komorebi, which describes the dappled light filtering through the leaves of trees, speaks to an attentiveness to transience, subtlety, and quiet beauty. That awareness of the ephemeral, the in-between, and the easily overlooked resonates deeply with me and finds its way into my work. I’m less interested in spectacle than in moments of pause and spaces where light, rhythm, and feeling briefly align before disappearing.
As we have pointed out, each of your works is created with different methods of technical and narrative experimentation. Do you think modern technological innovations can contribute to or hinder the visual intentions of the artist?
I think modern technological innovations can do both, depending on how consciously they’re used. Technology itself is neutral, it becomes either a contribution or a hindrance based on whether it serves the artist’s visual and conceptual intentions. In my own process-based work, technology functions as part of an evolving dialogue rather than a fixed solution. It becomes something to test, resist, and respond to over time.
When it’s used as a tool for experimentation, it can extend perception, enable new forms of narrative, or reveal things that couldn’t be seen or constructed otherwise. It can deepen the work and expand the language of visual expression. At the same time, technology can become a distraction if its novelty or efficiency begins to dictate the work rather than support it. For me, the goal is always to remain intentional and to use technology in a way that reinforces the underlying ideas and emotional resonance of the piece, rather than allowing the method or process to overshadow the meaning.
There are other works of yours that we are happy to mention, albeit briefly. Prairiefire (2021) recounts the practice of planned fires on the Kansas prairies through a series of images that convey the idea of danger and fire, but also strength and hope. The Kaizen series (2021), inspired by an interview with photographer Ralph Gibson, and characterized by a particular approach that, starting from the interior, is then reflected on the exterior, so much so that the immortalized images become the consequence of a subjective, intimate and meditative observation. The Leaving Terra Firma project (2019), which takes inspiration from the installation by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, entitled You Who are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies. The shots in this series are conceived as visual metaphors in which the uncertainties of our reality emerge.
Or the Warming Effects series (2019), where instead the elements of nature are portrayed through abstractions and visual geometries. In this project, in fact, different forms and tools are combined to represent not only the human impact on the environment, but above all the emotional reaction that derives from it. Finally, Studies of Women (2017), a work which starts from the desire to manage personal pain, and transforms into a reflection on collective female themes, such as fragility and determination.
Let us conclude, therefore, by asking you about your future plans.
I use my Instagram account as a mood board or journal of sorts to calibrate future projects! I appreciate all the people who have joined me there looking at my thinking processes.