OLIVER SUTRO’S INTENTIONAL IMPROVISATIONS

A low sky hovers over a southern Oregon Coast steelhead river, concealing the tops of fir-covered foothills in mist and rain. The three colors of a coastal winter rest on the landscape like layers of sediment: forest green hillsides sandwiched between misty off-white above and blue-gray river below. Soaked but smiling, artist and fishing guide James Sampsel stands in the middle of a gravel bar, an in-progress painting on an easel set before him, bright flourishes of his oil paints the only other hues in the landscape. Raindrops bead on the canvas as Sampsel adds his name to the bottom right corner, unused paintbrushes clutched in his left hand.

The scene comes near the end of photographer and director Oliver Sutro’s 2021 film If I Tell Them. It’s an arresting one, made doubly poignant by the film’s theme—Sampsel’s struggle with bipolar disorder and his path toward better mental health through family, fishing and art. Throughout the film there is a sense of movement, a sense of not being able—or not wanting—to sit still, though this doesn’t preclude slowing down. I get the sense, talking with Sutro, that he can identify with the feeling.

Born in Los Angeles to globe-trotting British parents, Sutro got his first photography gig with the South Pasadena High School Tiger newspaper. After high school, a stint at Vermont’s Middlebury College, where he had planned to major in economics and premed, was interrupted by a study-abroad trip to New Zealand. There, he picked a camera up again and came away with a list of things he wanted to learn and do, like build a cabin and grow his own food, which was difficult with his double-major. Sutro decided to make a go of it with the camera after saving up his earnings from working as a chef. After a year of rejection at every turn, things started to fall into place. He followed If I Tell Them with School of Fish in 2023, which tells the story of a native Alaskan fishing family in Bristol Bay. Co-directed with Colin Arisman, it won Best Short Film at the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival that year.

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