Photography

Yes Yes We're Magicians

JONAH SAMSON

We always find something, eh Didi,

to give us the impression we exist?

Yes, yes, we’re magicians.

The following images are selected from Yes Yes We’re Magicians, a book containing a series of anonymous vintage photographs organized by Jonah Samson around a passage from Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play Waiting for Godot. The images, mostly sourced from eBay, reflect on life as tragicomic by focussing the viewer on sombre, disquieting and humorous moments from the past. Devoid of descriptive text, these photographs open their mysteries to modern interpretations. As in Beckett’s plays, the melancholic, surreal and bizarre are often put into dialogue.

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JONAH SAMSON

Jonah Samson is an artist and avid collector of photographs who lives on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. His photographic works have been exhibited widely, and he has produced several artist books, including Another Happy Day, published by Presentation House Gallery. He is represented by Macaulay & Co. Fine Art in Vancouver. Yes Yes We’re Magicians will be published by Figure 1 in May 2017. An exhibition by the same title will be mounted at Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver, BC, in May 2017.


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