About this Archive

Administrative/Biographical History

Anna Sampson is an autodidactic, photographic artist who shoots and prints exclusively on film and polaroid. A graduate in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts (2015), her work has showcased at Doomed Gallery (London) 2017; Turner Contemporary in Margate; Parallel in Vienna and The Untitled Space in New York. Anna has also featured in acclaimed cult publications as Dazed, i-D, Purple Fashion and The Face. Her work is borne out of a lifelong fascination with the body ‘as both a site of fetishisation and transience, on which power struggles are played out.’

Her art seeks to harness the erotic potential of the female body whilst exploring the various strategies of negation and resistance employed through performance and representation. In her more recent work, Anna turns her lens on the various stages of dress and undress, exploring the interplay of fetishism, sedition, queerness and the avant-garde. All her work is heavily informed by intersectional feminism - specifically the intersection of gender and sexuality with race, class and the politics of the personal – and is further supported by academic inquiry. In this instance, she hopes that her current postgraduate study of Gender & Sexuality at UCL will continue to inspire and inform her art (and vice versa) with the ultimate goal of working towards social justice for those who are marginalised and oppressed by the patriarchy.

Scope and Content

Photographic Archive of Anna Sampson, including: copies of zines and publications, including ‘Gender Trouble’, ‘Venus Envy’, ‘Venus Envy II’ and ‘Polaroids’, 2017-2021; extensive black & white prints, polaroids, sketches and negatives from all of Sampson’s projects, 2016-2021; exhibition prints and portfolio from exhibition ‘Gender Trouble’ at the Doomed Gallery (2017) and ‘Camp’ at Dalston Superstore (2020); sketches, artwork, watercolours and other material from time at Chelsea School of Art, 2012-2015.