1%, 2014

Samuel Cueto   New & remarkable Artists

Samuel Cueto is a lover of Thailand. He went there six times between 2014 and 2016 to make his series of photographs that gave rise to his first major exhibition "City of Smiles" at the Argentic Gallery. His work was also represented at the Rencontres Photographiques d'Arles in 2016 and at the 193 Gallery in 2018.

Mainly taken in the suburbs of Bangkok, Pattaya and Phuket, these photos are far from postcard landscapes: local gangs, traffickers of all kinds, prostitutes, live in another reality, yet only a few minutes away from paradisiacal beaches. The photographer pays homage to these marginalized people, to their fragility, to their humanity. These photographs taken in Thailand are the ones that reach a greater number of visitors and collectors.

Street portraitist, Samuel Cueto has focused his work on the left behind, the invisible ones who live far from the city centres. Originally from the working-class neighbourhoods of this "forgotten" France, the photographer logically pays tribute to his fellow men who no one seems to pay attention to anymore.

Samuel Cueto also tells us about himself through the portraits he takes of people with a seemingly chaotic journey: damaged but authentic beings who exert a magnetic beauty on the viewer. While many photographers have tried to capture the world of ghettos and suburbs without managing to go beyond the exoticism of safari photography, Samuel Cueto is not afraid to get his hands dirty and show the dirty and filthy side of our society. With his camera, the photographer crystallizes our most current problems: acceptance of the other in his difference, his experience, and his origins.