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SARAH WILMER
to her childhood in pastoral Missouri.
Wilmer grew up in St. Charles, about 45 minutes northwest of St. Louis. She and her twin sister were the middle children, bookended by an older brother and a younger brother. They were
a working-class family: her father, a traveling salesman who later became an engineer;
her mother, a jack-of-all- trades, who did everything from secretarial work to dog training.
“The landscape was flat, open fields, woods, soft hills, rivers, highways, fast food
chains and strip malls,” Wilmer remembers. “We had lots of animals. I was a sick kid, but also active. I was always the one coming up with weird stuff for us to do, like, ‘Let’s go put on a play or a dance performance’ or ‘Let’s explore in the woods.’”
From a young age, she documented these adventures with a Polaroid and disposable cameras, covering her bedroom walls with Polaroid prints and four-inch by six-inch prints from a Walmart store. Still, she never considered the idea of a career in visual arts until she enrolled at St. Louis Community College and, in order to fulfill an elective requirement, signed up for a photography class. It would prove to be a transformative experience.
“Watching my first image appear in the darkroom was magical. I instantly thought, ‘This is it,’” she explains. Wilmer immediately changed her focus, flying through introductory art classes while working at two different photo labs and waiting tables in order to cover tuition. That same relentless drive took her to the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) in Portland, Oregon. It was there, amidst the region’s lush abundance, that she developed her voice as an artist.
As the courses were winding down in her single year at PNCA, Wilmer knew she wanted to go to New York City, but she also knew that she needed more experience. It was 2001, and the Internet was still young, so she pulled out a phone book and
methodically cold-called photographers, looking for work. At every interview, Wilmer showed her book to prospective employers only to hear that, with work as conceptual as hers, she should meet Portland, Oregon–based photographer Mark Hooper.
“Finally, I was able to get hold of Mark for a meeting,” she explains. Hooper wasn’t looking for an assistant, but offered Wilmer a paid internship on the spot. “I learned more about photography in three months with him than
I had in three years—concepting, lighting, problem solving, directing, managing, editing, marketing. Really, just how to be a professional.”
That internship eventually transitioned into a studio manager position, which in turn empowered Wilmer to strike out on her own as a freelance photography assistant, printer and location scout. She spent three years in Portland before she had an epiphany. “I was driving in my Volvo station wagon to my house with my girlfriend in a really nice neighborhood,” she recalls, “and I thought, ‘If I don’t do anything, I’m going to still be here when I’m 40 years old because it’s
so comfortable and nice.’” Wilmer left for New York City a month later.
Like most, her arrival in New York was inauspicious; she rented space in the living room of some friends’ Crown Heights apartment in Brooklyn. The rent was cheap in 2004, but squatters filled the building, and the neighborhood was rough, to say the least. There were several stabbings, and she barely escaped being mugged for thousands of dollars worth of photo equipment. During that time, she befriended two of her favorite photographers, Chris Buck and Kyoko Hamada, and hustled her way into jobs big and small.
“Now that I do my own work, it’s pretty specific,” she says, “but at that time, I worked with travel, story, advertising and art photographers. Such a range of experience—every project brought me something different.”
A year after her arrival, Wilmer secured a scholarship to study at Parsons School of Design, where she would earn a BFA in photography. Former classmate and current creative director and stylist Chelsea Fairless recalls Wilmer making quite the first impression. “I was instantly drawn to how sophisticated and cinematic her work was. So many of her photos have surreal, ambiguous subject matter—you can project all sorts of strange narratives on them,” Fairless says. “But I was also drawn to the fact that her work was much more technically advanced than that of our classmates.”
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Right: “In order to illustrate the tremendously important work Reverend Billy does with the Church of Stop Shopping and how he performs it with passion, I photographed him in the park where he practices his sermons. A ‘burning’ bush among the wintry trees serves as the perfect visual metaphor for Reverend Billy. I heard that when he saw the photos, he said, ‘Damn, I’ve been photographed a lot, but I’ve never been photographed like that!’” Jonathan Melamed, photo editor; Overflow, client.
“Overflow magazine asked me to do a story using Butter by Nadia dresses. Her garments are about transformation and movement, and she uses materials so exceptionally soft and silky that they seem out of this world. To capture this, I worked with a dancer who wore the pieces while making expressive, gorgeous shapes to interact abstractly with a nighttime snowstorm. The overall feeling evokes space, weightlessness and the unknown.” Jonathan Melamed, photo editor; Overflow, client.
© Chris Buck