Scott Link - Photographer - Artist - Musician
Artist Statement
I make photographs and paintings about people, place, and the spaces between them.
My photography is rooted in observation. I am interested in ordinary moments, the gestures and expressions that reveal something about a person, and the environments we create around ourselves. Much of my work happens on the street, where the unexpected, the uncomfortable, the funny, and the quietly beautiful exist side by side.
My studio work approaches some of the same questions differently. Painting gives me a way to move away from observation and toward memory, sensation, and interpretation. The photographs record what I encounter; the paintings allow me to respond to it.
I am less interested in producing a particular kind of photograph or painting than I am in paying attention—to people, to places, and to what is happening beneath the obvious surface of things.
I am currently developing The Baltic Project, an ongoing documentary project examining life and identity in the communities surrounding the Baltic Sea at a moment of profound political and social uncertainty. Beginning in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Gotland, the project looks beyond geopolitics to the people who actually live with its consequences: their communities, histories, anxieties, resilience, and relationships with one another.
I make this work because I believe paying attention is a form of participation.
