Fine Art Photographer


sam notarbartolo photography
 

Being a commercial photographer has its limitations, I would produce my own personnel projects for potential and existing clients. Today I call these images "Fashion as Fine Art". My Studio located on Miami's South Beach was one block from the ocean. Available to me were the Miami Art Deco buildings and the beach to photograph. I preferred being removed from the activities of South Beach. My choice of locations are secluded beaches, wooded areas, in the studio or minimal interiors. Unlike my commercial work with fashion, I wanted to create simple images, keeping shoots as raw as possible. This vision contributed me to become one the top fashion photographers in South Florida. Like a painter with his canvas and subject, I love the intimacy, between myself and model.

I wanted the intimacy created with only the model and myself, with as few distractions as possible, bare bones, cutting back on the noise, allowing the model and myself to connect together. Occasionally I would bring in a makeup artist or wardrobe stylist. Garments I choose, for my models would be a man's white shirt, jeans, slips, dresses that are light and airy so they would flow with movement, sheer, or just a bare body. Creating provocative fluid images, capturing the models individuality, strength and sensuality. This is my gift, being able to bring these feelings out of my models, this is what I became know for. These images are all about the model and myself, not the fashion. Fashion as fine art images will transport you on a journey inward, while you reflect on your own life's aspirations, dreams and desires. It's all about the beauty of women and the serenity we create together, that is timeless and so elusive in our busy world today.

Currently, I am re-editing the fashion as art images, adding extra layers using mixed media. While also developing a series, of new images "Liquid Dreams." Models are photographed from above water, underwater, their bodies suspended, weightless in water. Water creating, abstractions of colors, with fabrics and textures reflecting light, natural or artificial, while models are submerged in water. Their shapes interacting with shadows and light.

Light Graffiti are fireworks that appear like Asian calligraphy, in black and white. My abstract gallery Reanimation are images created from found objects, man made and organic. While the Earthscape's are from ocean, land and skyscapes. They all possess the sensitivity of my fashion work.

I was born in New York City 1947. I first started photographing while in the US Navy.  During college, opportunities appeared and I began assisting. Working with New York's leading fashion and fine art photographers during the 70s, an explosive period for fashion photography. My assisting with Mel Dixon and Ken O'Hara, who both worked with Avedon and Hiro, taught me not only technique but valuable lessons on humanity. I am forever grateful to have been a part of that lineage. I have worked both nationally and internationally and photographed for the International Inside Out Project through a grant from Broward County.

Some of my clients include Playboy, Penthouse, Beber Silverstein Advertising, Inter American Advertising, Marc USA Advertising, Maximum Creative, Big Orange Japan, Harpers Bazaar, Revlon, Cosmopolitan, Tail Sportswear, Target, Avanti Press, Maria Conchita Alonso, and Jennifer Capriati, Karl Lagerfeld, Fort Lauderdale Museum and Inside Out.