Summer Wagner
Photographer and video storyteller making cinematic, narrative image series
Biography
Summer Wagner is a storyteller who works in cinematic still images and video. She comes from Rockford, Illinois, and returned there during the COVID-19 pandemic. She studied film in college, planning to write and direct, and bought her first camera after about a year working in a grocery store. Her images use desaturated colour, strong contrast and shallow depth of field, with symbolic details throughout. She describes her work as realism with a dash of surrealism. Some projects start from a fully written story, others from casual shooting in which stories emerge, and she also builds narratives in the edit by pairing images taken at different times. Midamerican Fever Dream (2023 to 2024) follows a family living in the remains of the Rust Belt across four chapters, with nine wide images, 119 animated editions and nine NFTs. Its characters are Judith, Ernest, Bridget and Douglas, and the story is set during COVID-19. Her influences include Lars von Trier, Ted Chiang, Ursula K. Le Guin and Leonard Cohen. She is exhibited at Paris Photo 2026 Digital Sector by Nguyen Wahed gallery.
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