About:
Tom Sainsbury’s work seamlessly merges satire, parody, and character-driven narratives. His characters, at a glance are simultaneously absurd and familiar, and they act as cultural mirrors, reflecting back the peculiar rhythms of contemporary New Zealand life. His tone is observational, yet if you look a little deeper, it’s layered, revealing something more tender and human beneath the exaggeration. I was really keen to carry this duality into the images themselves. With the visual language of Filter, I combined the authenticity of documentary photography, beauty of environmental portraiture and peppered it with a performative edge, creating portraits that sit between realism and theatre. The result is an aesthetic that feels both intimate and heightened.
Collectively I feel we all admire Sainsbury's outlook on humanity, and the joy it brings to our day to day. It’s perhaps a hidden celebration of our wild uneven colours and peculiar humanness, the very imperfections that make the world shimmer, ache and feel alive. In photographing Filter, the approach was an intentionally slower pace, formatted and centre framed. I became increasingly aware of how much the environments were shaping the work. The spaces were never really neutral backdrops; they were always considered and carried their own weight, their own personalities. In many ways, they became characters themselves, absorbing, amplifying, and sometimes even challenging the personas.
As a whole, Sainsbury’s comedy distills the essence of cultural archetypes, exposing the idiosyncrasies, contradictions, and unspoken truths that define our social fabric. His approach transforms everyday interactions into theatrical studies of identity and the performative nature of social roles, he’s a master at blurring the boundaries between comedy, portraiture, and cultural critique.
