Sam Youkilis

Sam Youkilis (b. 1993) is a photographer born and raised in New York City. He earned his BFA in photography from Bard College in 2016. He is currently living and working in Berlin. Sam’s practice revolves around travel, the pursuit of idealized landscapes, and the way people navigate them. His work responds to the visually alluring qualities of these places but also the strangeness of how people move within them. His photographs play with scale and perspective to skew perception, alienating subjects and blurring the boundaries between real and fake.

Beach Day in Barcelona

These photographs were made at the beach in Barcelona in October, 2018. They were taken over the course of three days but each day was more than a week apart. I visited on a Monday, Thursday and a Sunday but found little had changed. The beach was always packed. Even in late October—with the onset of fall and change in temperature—there were no signs of slowing down. The only evidence that time is moving forward in these pictures is the shadow casted by the sun. Otherwise, the subjects shed any relation to date or time and continue uninterrupted. The beach also functions as a place where public and private become fluid. Individuals, couples, and groups devise their own spaces and engage moments of intimacy otherwise reserved for elsewhere. These pictures reflect those moments and are vignettes from this beach day.  

To view more of Sam Youkilis’s work please visit his Instagram.