Award-Winning Photographer to Shed Light on Underground Performers in New Book

LOS ANGELES - Oct. 29, 2015 - PRLog -- A photography book slated for release in the fall of 2017 will put the spotlight on alternative performers of all stripes, from drag queens to burlesque dancers, glass walkers, sword swallowers, stilt walkers, aerialists and pole dancers.

“Performer: The Book” will be a glossy coffee table book that features dazzling images of over 100 artists captured by celebrated international photographer Sam Fielding. Fielding is currently traveling the world to tap into the rarely seen underworld of alternative performance artists who strut their stuff in the shadows. She recently finished year one of the three-year project.

When finished, the book layout will include a four-page spread for each artist, including one large image, an artist bio and two pages with a collage of images. Fielding’s travels will take her to London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco by the time of the book’s completion.

Night, Fielding said, is a time for reinvention, and no one understands this better than the underground performer, who is able to shed a drab daytime identity to become something spectacular. Rather than viewing these rare birds as outcasts or freaks, Fielding wants her art to showcase their singular qualities and beauty. Her book brings light to the characters behind the masks, capturing them both in the midst of performance and backstage afterward.

“Having been raised around the nightlife scene in the south of Spain with drag queens, it is second nature for me to drift into this wonderful world of nightlife with some incredible artists, most of whom  make a conscious choice to live the way they do,” Fielding said. “These artists are often misunderstood but might just have it right, because they really choose to live.

“I want to show how talented and well travelled these artists are,” she continued. “So I traveled everywhere looking for these rare artists to showcase their beauty and talent. My journey has been almost spiritual as I get into the worlds of these artists. I can’t wait for others to join me on this special journey.”

Performer: The Book is generating a good deal of excitement as it rapidly gains a following on Instagram. Artists around the world are seeking out Fielding to shoot them for the project and are calling her work “the Bible of the performer world.” The project has already won several awards.

A promotional video for Performer: The Book can be viewed online at https://vimeo.com/143402634.



About the Photographer

Sam Fielding is an award-winning photographer who has been fascinated by the color, verve and flamboyance of the nightlife since she was a small child growing up in Puerto Banus, Marbella, where her mother ran a hair salon next door to the famous nightspot GiGi's. Today, she is a married mother of two who runs a portrait studio in Los Angeles. She studied photography at the Fine Arts College in Belsize Park, London, and trained with celebrated photographers including Annie Leibowitz, Malcolm Venville and Peter Zownir. In 2010, Fielding won the PDN annual award for her “Made in America” project, an intuitive take on the idealism of 1950s America as conveyed through vintage cars, airplanes and the destruction of the Salton Sea. She was also a finalist in the the Julia Margaret Cameron Award and received an honorable mention in the London International Creative Awards. Her work has been featured in exhibitions, magazines, ad-campaigns and literary journals. For more information about Sam Fielding, go to http://samfielding.com.

Learn more about Performer: The Book at www.performerthebook.com. Follow Performer on Facebook (www.facebook.com/performerthebook) and Instagram (www.instagram/performerthebook).