Raymond Sagapolutele Interview

From the Coconet series Humans of the Islands

Published on The Coconet June 2020

Raymond Sagapolutele
Photographer/ Visual Artist
Samoan

Tell us a bit about yourself - where were you born and raised?

Talofa lava and thanks for the opportunity to share. I was born at Middlemore Hospital in Otahuhu and I spent my early years in Invercargill and the Waikato and our family came back to South Auckland in 1980 and I’ve been a proud son of Manurewa ever since.

How did you first get into photography? Where did you make your start?

Mum and dad always had a camera in the house, they weren’t anything fancy and it was either a polaroid or those weird think Kodak cameras that used 110 film – they looked like those skinny little cameras you’d seen in spy films. I used to play around with them and some of my early photos are both awesome and hilarious. I didn’t take it seriously as part of my practice as an artist until around 2003 when, at my wife's insistence I took a couple of night classes to learn how to shoot, develop film and print. Since then, the camera became another way for me to frame stories.

Read the full interview on The Coconet

Raymond is exhibiting at the Auckland Festival of Photography which opens on the 27th of May and is on until the 14th of June.  Click here for more details on the exhibition.

Check out more of his photography on his website RaymondSagapolutele.com