Bio

Sam Bulleit (b. 1998) is an interdisciplinary artist from Louisville, KY and currently based in Chicago, IL. Sam works across a variety of areas in photography, new media art, and book arts. Through his artistic practice, Sam navigates a confusing world too often filled with cyncism, irony, and velvet ropes by way of a disciplined approach to the act of discovery through the power of visual metaphor and artistic curiosity. 

Starting his career in the mid-2010’s, Sam began by photographing what he knew; the conservative, quiet reservation of rural Middle America, and the glamorous artists of the Louisville DIY music scene who lived in defiance of it. In admiration of the boldness of his peers, in 2019 Sam moved from the sleepy Ohio River Valley to Illinois where he enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 2023). During his time at the Art Institute, Sam first began by expanding on his foundation of portraiture and editorial photography. Soon after, he went on to start VETSH Photozine, beginning with its debut issue exploring ideas of emotional burnout and renewal through a visual study of food waste or “spent” ingredients, and is currently selling issues online as well as in retail bookstores coast-to-coast. In addition to his publishing pursuits, Sam is producing his first major photographic project, The Tsushima Cyanotypes (2022). This series explores our quickly disappearing line between reality and simulation as we grow closer to a hybridized relationship between reality and the virtual, through a visual study of cyanotype prints made from photographs taken in a digital environment modeled after 15th century Imperial Japan.