From the first photo in this series – Sam Stephenson’s parents in bed with framed portraits of their children on the wall above them – the scene for Fake Nostalgia is set. Love, isolation, beauty, coincidence, tricks and antics emanate from everyday banality. And through Sam’s meticulous eye, the everyday inevitably becomes particular.

The process of photographing, developing and cataloguing is instinctive for Sam – image making having become increasingly inseparable from his being over the past fifteen years. The images in this book, taken between 2005-2015, are part of Sam’s ongoing body of work. The experience and memory of ‘being there’ is different for everyone, indeed, it is continually being constructed and amended by each of us as we create our narratives. In his own pursuit of a narrative, which you now hold, Sam was confronted by the idea of a ‘Fake Nostalgia’.

– Paloma Pizarro & Willie Ackerman

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