The Surreal World of Savana Ogburn

The world of Savana Ogburn is surreal, cinematic and always has a sprinkle of kitsch. Her body of work is vast, including an ongoing self-portrait series ‘Identity-Crisis’ exploring queerness, Hollyweird, a tale of an alternative Hollywood starlet in the collaborative project with Valheria Rocha, and recently the dream-like medieval fantasy Damsel in Delight. Ogburn doesn't stop at photography though, she also gives us paper cut-out stop motion short films that leap at all the wonderfully strange possibilities, as well as incorporating painting and cut-outs into her photography. 

After graduating with a BFA in photography in 2016, Ogburn has produced work for companies like Capitol Records and Gucci Beauty, spreading her surrealist takes on reality far and wide. I asked Savana some questions on what influences her to create these dreamy worlds, maintaining inspiration and the appeal of campy horror.

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A lot of your work feels like snippets of a wider story, almost like a set of stills from a surrealist feature film. Do you have any plans for longer pieces of work?

Absolutely! I spent a long time rarely watching movies (I think largely because I was afraid of spending 2 hours not working, as crazy as that sounds. I’ve done a lot of work to dismantle that one!), but during the past year I’ve been watching tons of movies. I’ve always wanted to create work in the biggest, most extreme and impactful ways and I’ve realized recently that film could be a great next step for me. I’ve made a few short stop motion videos in the past and I definitely want to expand on that down the road with bigger concepts and longer stories.EADY_

Are there any films or filmmakers that you are inspired by?

I’m obsessed with John Waters- he was one of my earliest inspirations when I started making art about my queer identity. I feel like a lot of the work that I had seen in the past about queers depicted us as victims, or heroes, or jokes, so seeing John Waters depict nasty, glamorous, queer villains as just that was very enticing to me.

I also recently watched Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader and felt so seen by it. Obviously the storyline resonated with me, but seeing all of the visual references that I love bundled with a perfect story was like...a cinematic warm blanket. I read that Babbit referenced John Waters, Pierre et Gilles, and Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands for the visual aesthetic of the movie and it made me so happy as those are all huge inspirations for me as well. When I finished watching it, I immediately thought, Holy shit, that’s how I want my work to make people feel. I can’t imagine what that film would have done for me if I had seen it as a teenager.

I also can’t not mention Sally Potter’s Orlando which was based on the book by Virginia Woolf, which I’m currently reading for the first time now. I’m just really obsessed with the idea of not only genderfuck, but genderfuck across the span of 400 years. And the costumes. And the wistfulness. And the Tilda Swinton/Quentin Crisp combo.PAYWALL___

How do you take the inspiration and incorporate it into your own style?

I think about this a lot. I frequently find myself asking where the line is between taking inspiration and just imitating the things that I like. Obviously when I was really young, I was copying the artists I loved in an attempt to learn what my own style could be. I feel like I’ve definitely gotten past that point, but I still frequently interrogate myself about how I’m using the inspiration that I’m taking in. I think that it’s really good to stay on top of the impulse to create something that’s directly inspired by something else- when I have this impulse, I try to ask myself why I’m having that response, what new thing can I create using just a piece of the work I’m inspired by, and what else I can combine it with to make something that feels fresh.

I should also say that I tend to police my own inspirations a little too much sometimes and often create unnecessary creative blocks for myself when I really should just be making the damn work. I’m trying to get better about balancing those two feelings.

How do you find creating self-portraits vs. creating a series of images featuring other people? Which do you prefer?

I’ve found that it’s very cyclical- sometimes I’ll spend a month where I’m creating self portraits and having fun and really growing that practice. And then I’ll crash and get sick of seeing my own face and will really want to photograph other people. So it’s not necessarily that I like one more than the other, it just depends on what I’m trying to accomplish.

It also depends on the character- some ideas I have for characters feel very me, or speak to something I want to explore in Identity Crisis, so I’ll use them in a self portrait. But often, I come up with characters that I’m attracted to for some reason or another, but have nothing to do with my personal identity, or would just be served better by another person.

Also, self portraiture is just technically really hard- not being able to see myself to give myself direction in real time while I’m shooting makes things take longer, I worry more about the result (especially when I’m shooting film), and it can just also be physically taxing to be both the photographer and the model. Photography is already a super physical job, especially the work that I like to do, so adding another job in can just be a lot.

What inspired you to start your ‘Identity Crisis’ series, and how do you maintain that inspiration after working on a project for over several years?

I started Identity Crisis my freshman year of college when a professor saw a self portrait of mine and recommended that I research Cindy Sherman. It was around the same time that I was starting to realize that I might be queer and was becoming interested in drag performance- I had  never considered performing myself as I hate being in front of people, but I really admired drag performers for the camp, humor, and craft of what so many of them do. I was so inspired by this art form but wasn’t sure how I could incorporate it into my own practice, especially when at the time I knew I was queer but wasn’t sure exactly where I fit in or what my labels were. That created this sense of imposter syndrome in me when I wanted to make work about my queerness but wasn’t exactly sure how to define it. I was super afraid of other queers thinking that I was an unwelcome guest, or that my work wasn’t valid because I wasn’t 100% about who I was. This is so silly to think about now, but it was a very real feeling at the time. (Now I just feel very gay and not so worried about it, thankfully.)

When I saw Sherman’s work, everything clicked for me. She was a woman who looked like me, effectively doing drag in work that she was creating by herself, from top to bottom. I was inspired by the wackiness and sense of humor in her images, which was something I had never seen in photography before. I also loved the range she had- she could look beautiful in one picture and gruesome in the next. 

I chose to do my final project for the class inspired by her, and the first five Identity Crisis pictures were the result. It started as a way of bringing humor and queerness into my work, and has grown with me as I’ve gone deeper into self exploration. It started about queerness and gender specifically, but now it feels like a catch all way to explore all of the different facets of myself and see them reflected back to me. 

What’s one of your favorite shoots you’ve worked on, and why?

I really loved working on La Poursuite, which I made with my friend and frequent collaborator, Kristen Hamby. We were talking a lot about how much we love horror movies, and how we wanted to make something that was intense and scary but that looked really beautiful. We were also both pretty over seeing the femme-fatale trope, so we decided that Kristen would play both characters in drag, which I think added a whole other layer of symbolism to the series. 

We conceptualized, styled, and shot the photos in a weekend, and I really had fun watching it all come together so quickly. I love mulling things over and really spending time on a project, but it was nice to force ourselves to just get something out. We took a lot of time with post production, editing the photos into a cohesive story, shooting those title cards, and just thinking it through. I’m really proud of the way it came out and we had so much fun doing it. 

Particularly in your works Hollyweird, Washed-up, and La Poursuite there are visual themes of campy horror, what about this genre draws you in?

I’ve always been attracted to the juxtaposition of beauty and horror (even when I was afraid to watch horror movies), and I’m very drawn to the idea that under every beautiful surface is a seedy, goopy underbelly. I think that horror can demonstrate that so well. 

I’m also really into the cathartic quality of horror movies with women and queers at the helm, and while it’s not quite horror (but is certainly gory), Killing Eve really did this for me- seeing a complicated, unlikable, and evil woman acting on her most impulsive desires and being forced to try and understand her was really powerful. There’s something endlessly interesting to me about seeing a queer woman act on evil impulses that just isn’t there when I see stories about men doing the same thing.

Photos: Savana Ogburn | Words: Charlotte Amy Landrum