Summer Wagner

The technical aspects of Wagner’s photography are rooted in her background in film, particularly in her attention to lighting and composition. A significant part of her creative process involves finding spots and props that speak to her. It takes the artist returning to a place multiple times to start to build out a scene in her head. This deliberate process comes from her commitment to creating work that feels deeply personal to her while also resonating universally with others.

“I try to create morally ambiguous scenes because I feel like that's the reality of how we live our lives.”

For Wagner, her own process can be labeled as obsessive, often spending hours shooting and editing to achieve her desired effect. Her work frequently features characters, sometimes herself in self-portraiture, juxtaposed against glowing screens or under dreamlike sources of light. She thinks there is something beautiful about the blue light that comes off of a screen; evoking a sense of longing and beauty in otherwise mundane settings. In her images, this contrast between the artificial light and the natural world creates a sense of ambiguity – at once familiar and otherworldly.

By playing with the viewer’s expectations of photography as a medium that captures reality, Wagner blurs the line between what is real and what is imagined.

Wagner describes her use of fantasy as a tool to explore the gap between how we experience the world emotionally and how we understand reality. Her photographs capture this liminal space, wanting to invite the viewer to question their personal perceptions.