Sam Youkilis

Under the Sun
Feb 1 – May 7, 2025
April 15, 2022, 6:17 AM © Sam Youkilis

Sam Youkilis (b. 1993) captures the yearnings and promises of travel as well as the beauty of the everyday with great attention to detail, light, and rich colors. In a nearly ritualistic manner, the New York photographer and filmmaker documents the view from his window every morning before strolling through the streets as an alert observer, using his iPhone to capture the seemingly trivial situations that unfold before his eyes: the fresh cup of espresso that is handed to him across the counter, the intensely colorful items displayed at a vegetable stand, fishing boats drifting in the water, or the casual tenderness of human gestures.

In addition to his success with commissioned work in commercial fashion photography, Youkilis, who studied at Bard College with instructors including Stephen Shore, has developed his own methods and visual aesthetics. He uses work-related travel as an opportunity to explore repetitive scenes of touristic leisure, which he captures in short, atmospheric videos. As a pioneer of a new narrative form, Youkilis shares his visual notes—which combine street photography, travel photography, and documentary photography—with a broad audience on Instagram.

May 30, 2023, 10:20 © Sam Youkilis
Novemver 14, 2020, 7:32 PM © Sam Youkilis

While it is often difficult to find postcards at vacation spots these days and showing slides to close friends at home is a thing of the past, social media has to a great extent become the platform for showing and sharing, for self-portrayal and selfaffirmatio—a stage for vacation idylls, coffee art, animal videos, selfies, and sunsets. Youkilis also takes the typical Instagram shots that one might expect, using familiar travel clichés while capturing local customs and long-established artisan traditions. In his practice, the amateur logic of the platform merges with the professionality of a trained artist who takes the seductive power of his pictures one step too far. His oeuvre, which by now includes tens of thousands of images of actions and motifs is arranged in thematic series and condensed into universal and timeless symbols of human experience—a poetic view of the things that we share under the sun.

Sam Youkilis’s work also highlights the uses and impact of photography in contemporary mass media and in our fast-moving visual culture: How do smartphone and social networks change our interaction with photography? How do we use images to form our identities, share our experiences, and create meaning?

In the exhibition Under the Sun, the artist’s first solo exhibition in an institution, C/O Berlin will bring Sam Youkilis’s visual archive of iPhone video sequences into an immersive exhibition space. A publication will accompany the exhibition.

Biography

Sam Youkilis (b. 1993, New York) studied at Bard College with Stephen Shore, An-My Lê, and others. Growing up in New York City, he discovered photography in high school, with his friends as his first subjects. As his practice evolved, his focus shifted to capturing daily life: processes, activities, people, and local customs wherever he finds himself. Youkilis has worked for The New Yorker, The New York Times, ZEIT, Vogue, and acclaimed fashion labels including Prada, Vivienne Westwood, Jacquemus, and many more. His work has become increasingly popular, gaining over seven hundred thousand followers on Instagram. Youkilis’s first monograph, Somewhere 2017–2023, was published by Loose Joints in November 2023. He currently lives in Italy.

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