Today we’d like to introduce you to Sam Yesko.
Hi Sam, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’ve always been an artist my whole life. Growing up with family members in all different parts of their own art exploration such as music, painting, makeup, and illustration, I knew that I was destined to become an artist myself. I started doing dance and baton twirling. I dedicated 13 years of competitive baton competitions starting in my early life.
But while I started off as a twirler, I’ve been drawing all my life. I become more serious in making traditional fine art in late elementary school. I was fascinated by the human form and would often draw the people around me or draw copies of imagery in my figure books. Going into my junior year of high school, I applied to my local technical school back in Maryland to try out computer game design and animation. I played around with creating digital illustrations as I grew up and thought it would be a good program for me to apply to. I learned a lot of helpful resources while attending the technical school. But in the midst of my junior year, I was told to go home and stay home due to COVID. It was an interesting time to figure out how we needed to work together only online and getting both group projects and individual projects complete while having limited resources. Near the following year, our program got moved to the local fine arts school. I was able to come back in person, but only a few select people could attend. I focused on mainly making illustrative work during this time instead of animation. Entering a new school with now only a certain amount of people being there felt awkward at times. But I was able to complete my senior capstone during those times and graduated high school.
I took a gap year before I attended any sort of college. I tired to go into my local community college, but the work was too easy for me and I felt like I had no challenge within that world. I entered into Pennsylvania College of Art & Design (PCA&D) undecided. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go into a more fine art route like what I was doing in the beginning, go into animation to solidify my skills more, or go into illustration to something I was comfortable with. PCA&D has your first year be your foundation year as a student, where you learn basics before you go into your dedicated major. I was very thankful to be able to take a step back and see all what the programs had for me first before I decided what I was set on.
My spring semester of my foundation year, I took a gamble and decided to take a black and white 35mm photography class where we learned how to develop our own film, print out our own imagery in the darkroom, and critique the imagery. That photo-bug bit me hard. I fell in love with this process of taking your time to shoot, the developing of film, and the slow process of seeing you print come to life. It was all so new to me, and I think that’s what fascinated me the most. I took that chance to choose my dedicated major as photography & video and put a new form of art into my tool box. While I proceeded to attend PCA&D, I learned a lot of valuable skills into enhancing my craft while being able to connect with our small major.
One of my professors sent me a link to a exhibition that he thought I should apply to. During that time, I got denied, but I applied to several photography exhibitions and competitions since that denial. I got into a pretty sold amount of them. I was able to not only show my work locally within Lancaster, PA, but also show my work within Philadelphia. I got into exhibitions nation-wide in states like California, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan. I took a chance on apply to a publication based in Japan and got in. With that publication, they showed the work off to different countries such as Japan, Italy, France, and the UK. I would have never thought my work would go that far.
I now have recently graduated PCA&D as of May 1st, 2026, and had my senior thesis that I had been working on since the start of summer before my senior year be shown to all of Lancaster.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
If your road is smooth in life, you aren’t living it. There has to be some bumps along the way for you to be able to learn from mistakes or situations that had happened to you.
For me, my biggest obstacle was while I was attending PCA&D. I was dating someone at the time for a couple of years whom I lived with and they sexually assaulted me multiple times. I have been assaulted in the past before, but those moments in time had me wake up. I knew that the things that was happening to me were wrong, but I didn’t know how to speak out for myself. It was a very long process of trying to get the strength to speak up for myself, in which I finally did.
After that process, I struggled with my relationship towards sex. I started to use it as a form of self-harm, feeling that I was nothing more than a body. I felt like I was looking at myself from the third-perspective. I eventually got into sexual assault counseling to get a better grasp of my emotions and to better my mental health. A way to be able to let my feelings be talked about because I felt that I couldn’t talk to anyone about this. The YWCA in Lancaster was truly my biggest supporter in helping me understand what I was going through, and what things I can do to help cope with my actions of self-harm.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I truly call myself an artist, but to get more specific the title that I like to use is fine art photographer and video artist. I’m interested in all photographic forms, but my work consists primarily of constructed, self-portraiture, and documentary photographic styles. I’m often drawn to the tensions between control and vulnerability, creating works based on the ideas of identity, trauma, the actions of the human body and how the psychological mind works within our daily lives.
I see my work as a use of therapy. Shooting and capturing the world around me based on that emotion I’m feeling within that period of time. I shoot a lot of self-portraiture. That is what I am most known for. It was the first thing that I did when I picked up a camera. I’m very much inspired by the work of Francesca Woodman and how she uses self in her photographic images.
I’m proud of all of my work. Even if I don’t feel it within that moment, I know I need to be my biggest supporter. This sentence once told to me has always stuck to my mind: “A healthy ego is important to have to move forward as an artist, who else is going to think our work is great if you don’t.”
I feel like what sets me apart from others is that I’m always consistently doing something. Either creating imagery, researching a body of work from an artist, talking to other artists, or looking for places where I can show my work. I feel like in today’s age and my generation, it can be hard to being always doing something. For me, I’m very much a workaholic. If I’m not doing something, I’m missing an opportunity that can help me grow.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
For me, luck has played as a part of being able to connect with others. A lot of people when they first meet me can feel intimidated by me (from what I’ve been told by multiple people). But they get to know me, and they start seeing the care that I give them, they warm up to me.
I love being able to help those around me. While I was in school, I attended classes I wasn’t even apart of. I would come in as a friendly face for people to see that I was a person they can come to if they ever needed help or assistance. I’ve always loved being able to give feedback to others, people come to me for advice or to get a critique from me because they know I will be serious with them and give my honest opinion. I’ve been able to get super close to a lot of my professors by hoping into their classrooms and helping them with whatever they needed.
Being able to take the time out of my day and build those relationships with the people around me have helped me learn what it’s like to be a leader, to be able to connect with people for not only this moment in time, but to see them grow in the future.
Pricing:
- NFS
- NFS
- NFS
- NFS
- NFS
Contact Info:
- Website: https://samyesko.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yeskostudios/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-yesko-817836297
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@yeskostudios
Image Credits
Personal Photo captured by Kiri Chhun (KChhun Photography)
