La Dolce Vita According to Sam Youkilis

Italy is a weird place. It’s a country full of contradictions, where monuments of the past tower ominously over the present, where violence, beauty, and sensuality are inextricably intertwined. With this ineffable nature, it’s hard even for Italians to agree on proper representation. They have, however, perfected a nostalgic, idealized way of portraying their dolce vita, a postcard version born of the post-World War II economic boom, with sweet songs, vibrant Vespas, luscious food, beautiful clothes, perpetual summer, and a sense of serendipity. Like all stereotypes, it carries a dash of truth—with so much more beyond it.

Sam Youkilis is a born-and-bred New Yorker, with a background as a travel photographer. After studying photography at Bard College with Stephen Shore, he turned his lens on his community, documenting it in a diaristic way. New York has its own specific kind of insularity, though—the city famously being a sort of miniature of the wide world—and Youkilis felt the need to overcome it. Through travel, he began laying the foundation of his vision, with that clean graphic framing and a penchant for finding the poetic in the mundane.

His quantum leap happened with Instagram, particularly when the vertical “stories” format was introduced. It was the perfect medium for what we could call “micro-videos”: small fragments of reality that live somewhere between a still and moving image. When presented in series, they can create complex, layered narratives. Youkilis was one of the first artists to perfect a language consubstantial with the medium used to distribute it, achieving something similar to what photography did for print magazines not so long ago.

Today, half a million people and counting follow Youkilis’s Instagram account, and his aesthetic, embraced by traditional media and fashion brands alike, will soon be celebrated in a debut monograph due out this fall.

Italian summer happens to constitute much of Youkilis’s work. So, after a spike in post-COVID tourism—maybe coincident with the slow-burning fresco of Northern provincial life in Call Me by Your Name and the dramatic beauty of Sicily as seen in The White Lotus—it’s fitting to discuss all things Italian with an artist who interprets a very personal and seductive version of la dolce vita.

Chiara Bardelli Nonino: How did you develop your distinctive video style?

Sam Youkilis: It happened quite organically as a natural departure from my photography. It started with video portraits and eventually became larger scenes of moving imagery. A lot of it is very spontaneous and reactive and I’m forced to frame and compose in seconds but some of it is a bit more meditated and slow. I feel it’s very much like that. I leave the house with no other plans but to take pictures, I’ll find a frame I like and wait for things to happen within that. And most of the time, it does. The camera has a strange way of conjuring things.

Bardelli Nonino: When did Italy enter the frame?

Youkilis: Well, there’s a family tie to it, even if sadly I’m not Italian. My parents met in Italy, got married there, and bought land in Umbria forty years ago, where I now live and am fixing a house. I’ve been visiting since I was a kid, learning the language, taking in the culture, and the Italian way of being.

Bardelli Nonino: What kind of artistic references shaped your idea of the country?

Youkilis: I draw a lot of inspiration from film. Most of all, Pasolini and Fellini. I think it’s an older Italy that I reference and look for. It has also something to do with the generation of Italians that I’m drawn to shoot, a way of life I think is on the verge of disappearing. There’s definitely an interesting tension between the sort of romanticized, visually striking, dolce vita Italy, and the overtourism and the more neglected aspects, like a certain hopelessness in the younger generations of Italians.

Generationally, a lot of these modes of behavior and ways of being are getting lost. It feels important to archive all of this in the present as these traditions are threatened.

Bardelli Nonino: Italians are definitely complicit in this nostalgic vision of the country (after all, we made it into a very recognizable brand), but there’s definitely a feeling among millennials and Gen Z, especially minorities, of being stuck there, of a lack of representation. 

Youkilis: I get that there’s that imbalance in my work, but it isn’t deliberate. I work in a very organic way; I wander and follow my instincts and record the things that I’m drawn to. I want to show the humanity of the world I find daily, to record what I find funny and beautiful, ordinary and mundane. In Italy especially, I find the gestures, the pace, and sensibilities of an older generation more interesting. I also think the power photography has to preserve and memorialize is an important tool. Generationally, a lot of these modes of behavior and ways of being are getting lost. It feels important to archive all of this in the present as these traditions are threatened. 

Bardelli Nonino: In general, the idea of Italy abroad has been largely shaped by a Mediterranean, Southern aesthetic, and Naples is very much a focus of your work. 

Youkilis: I fell in love with Naples immediately, the first time I went, and it has been a huge source of inspiration for me over the years. Recently, I’m having a little bit of trouble making work there. It is such a visually rich place with so much to offer but I’m finding a lot of the output pretty homogenous. Plus, there’s an oversaturation of Napoli-themed images online. And still brands are hiring me for all these commercial campaigns with that in mind, so I am really specific about working in a certain way. Sometimes I suggest looking at local artists’ work to see if a brand is sure that it is my point of view they are after.

Now and then I get criticized for “orientalizing” the Southern Italian way of life, but I do see the same tropes, motifs, and subjects in many Italian works as well. I don’t think I am using Italian culture as a prop, even if I have an outsider’s point of view.

Bardelli Nonino: Why do you think fashion was so quick to embrace your way of seeing?

Youkilis: I think storytelling-wise, it’s more interesting to focus on the craft, on the makers, on the cultural context in which the brand lives. It gives a sense of place to what they do that can’t be achieved by bringing the brand to a beautiful location that they have no connection to. I say “no” a lot, though, if I don’t feel I can produce something meaningful or have a say in the casting or creative direction. I am sure the fact that I’m being embraced by the fashion industry has also to do with the slight shift in beauty standards. The last thing I want to do, though, is use people I spend a ton of time building relationships with to sell clothes. Some of them have become quite iconic, like the man with the Tutto Passa (Everything goes) tattoo, but sometimes companies tread on the very thin line of stereotyping, especially in places so recognizable, like Napoli.

Bardelli Nonino: Are you ever afraid of misrepresenting your subjects, of getting them lost in translation?

Youkilis: I think it has a lot to do with the way images are disseminated and consumed today. I try to build a relationship with almost everyone I shoot, to be respectful. I try to explain where and how the work is going to exist. I don’t include captions because I want to build an open space for conversation, and I don’t want to impose my interpretation, but then I am releasing my work into this sort of ether where I can’t control it anymore. I can explain to a person that I’m going to make a video of them while they’re putting suntan oil on at a beach in Napoli and I’m going to publish it on Instagram. And they’re super excited about that, about getting a million views. But I can’t really explain to them that three months later I might be fighting with an Australian company that’s selling skincare and using this image as an example of what not to do.

Bardelli Nonino: Does your work change its meaning depending on who is looking?

Youkilis: Honestly, I don’t think so. And I have to say that one of the most meaningful things to me is that most generations of Italians can relate to it. I remember talking to the image director at a very famous fashion house in Italy who told me, “My mom, my grandma, and I, we all follow you.” And I ended up working with them. I loved it.

Bardelli Nonino: There’s a witty, humorous undertone in your work. Can it be misinterpreted?

Youkilis: It’s inherently part of my work, in a very sincere way. I want the viewer to feel like they’re seeing the world the way that I’m seeing it. I’m not seeking humor or making fun, but I think the things that I’m drawn to are often quite funny. I guess there’s also humor, to an extent, in some of the most stereotyped representations of Italy. I am obsessed by the visually alluring side of it, but I know it can also feel contrived. I guess my voice is to be found in that gap between sincerity and performance.

Bardelli Nonino: Do you consciously play with Italian clichés?

Youkilis: I used to do an exercise where, before going to a place, I’d search the geotag on Instagram or Google. So when I post from Pisa, for example, I’ll play with the classic “holding the tower with my hands” trope, trying to upend that image. Then again, I think it’s clear that I’m obsessed with Italian food, Italian traditions, and Italian people, so a lot of my work is also genuine appreciation.

Bardelli Nonino: Food is a huge part of your work, I guess because it’s also a huge part of Italian culture: the rituality, the aesthetic of it, the regional traditions and of course the exhausting fights over the right way to prepare a dish . . .

Youkilis: My dad owned two restaurants when I was growing up, so I was very much living and working in them in my teenage years. When I finished undergrad, and no one would hire me to do photo work, I started offering to shoot for free for restaurants. I was also actively working as a bartender, selling wine, and as a server, so I think my love for food comes from all of this. Italy is perfect for that love: the focaccia in Genoa tastes different than the one in Camogli, tomatoes are cooked in thousands of ways. What makes the country so special is how much things can change in towns five kilometers (three miles) apart, and how much pride each takes in its traditions. This defensiveness of customs, this stubbornness, makes Italy one of the most compelling places. At the same time, this fervent desire to maintain tradition stops Italy from moving forward in some ways. 

Bardelli Nonino: Have you read The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa?

Youkilis: Yes!

Bardelli Nonino: There is this famous quote in it that is used all the time to describe Italy. It’s sort of a cliché: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”

Youkilis: I think it’s perfect.

Somewhere by Sam Youkilis will be published by Loose Joints in November 2023.