Sam Wang

Sam Wang received an MFA in Photography from the University of Iowa in 1966. He then founded the photography program at Clemson University, where he taught for 40 years before retiring as Alumni Distinguished Professor. During a sabbatical in 2003, he taught at the Nanjing University of the Arts, where he began lecturing and exhibiting in China. Along with Zhong Jianming, a colleague from Nanjing, and former student Christina Z. Anderson, he coauthored Handcrafted: The Art and Practice of the Handmade Print, the first book to seriously address alternative photographic processes published in China. The book became a major catalyst for the development of the Chinese alternative process photography community.

Throughout his career, Sam has worked with many photographic processes, and his images have appeared in numerous publications. Cyanotype, however, has always remained his favorite because, as he says, “it’s so easy,” yet so difficult to fully control. He often compares the process to playing the piano: “It’s so easy. You just get a piano and push down on the keys, right?” His method of combining traditional cyanotype with Mike Ware’s New Cyanotype process was featured in Christina Z. Anderson’s book Cyanotype: The Blueprint in Contemporary Practice. He continues to explore the medium and create new work in South Carolina.