Samuel David Bayer (born February 17, 1962) is an American visual artist, cinematographer, and commercial, music video and film director. Bayer was born in Syracuse, New York. He graduated from New York City's School of Visual Arts in 1987 with a degree in Fine Arts. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1991, where he continues to live and work.
With a successful music video career under his belt, Bayer has received equal acclaim within the commercial world. Well into his second decade of advertising, Bayer's work continues to be recognized. In 1996, his Nike commercial, "If You Let Me Play", won an Association of Independent Commercial Producers Award for Best Direction. In 2011, his Super Bowl spot for Chrysler, "Born of Fire", received multiple awards, including an Emmy and a Cannes Gold Lion.[2]
New Line Cinema and Platinum Dunes selected Bayer to direct their remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.[3] Bayer finally agreed to direct the film after a personal plea from producer Michael Bay.[4] With a production budget of $35 million, the film held the number one spot at the US box office in its first week in April 2010. The film starred Academy Award-nominee Jackie Earle Haley and introduced Rooney Mara in her first major studio role. Bayer originally suggested he would not be open to returning for a sequel, but later retracted the statement in the weeks leading up to the film's debut.[5] The film received negative reviews and, despite commercial success, no sequel was produced. Platinum Dunes confirmed in 2018 they were no longer intending to remake any further films based on existing IP.[6] In 2013, Bayer acknowledged the production had been fraught, but the experience had allowed him to return to advertising with renewed vigour and passion.[7]
Icarus Rises, an original premise that he developed for a decade. A proof of concept trailer was released in 2017.[45]
Photography
On March 3, 2013, Bayer opened his first major solo exhibition at ACE Gallery Beverly Hills entitled, "Diptychs & Triptychs". Bayer presented a series of sixteen twelve-foot-tall, female nude triptychs as well as four ten-foot-tall diptych portraits. In an Interview magazine article, Bayer commented that "the initial effect of the portraits are overwhelming, and a bit spooky." Bayer's understanding of Hollywood's constant superficial dissection and scrutinization of women, lead him to strip his subjects of all artifice in order to provide an alternative view of womanhood in contemporary culture. Exposed full frontally, these women might have been perceived as vulnerable on a smaller scale; however, the straight gaze and the enlarged scale creates an intimation of a "new race of superwomen."[46][47]
Bayer's series discussed the ongoing biological and sociological evolution. For studies of the female form, these women would not have existed in the mid-twentieth century prior to the sexual revolution of the 1960s when artists began to reconsider the body as a politicized terrain and explored issues of gender, identity, and sexuality which manifest in the work of photographers Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, Larry Clark, Hannah Wilke and Nan Goldin.[47]
Bayer treated "Diptychs & Triptychs" like a film project, holding open castings for hundreds of women. Bayer's subjects held poses against a simple white backdrop for up to four hours during marathon fourteen-hour-shoot days. Bayer enlarged the 4" x 5" film negatives into the series of twelve-foot-tall triptychs and ten-foot-tall diptychs in what was a deeply personal process, one that afforded him the benefit of complete creative control.
The series of work was inspired by a conversation Bayer had with his late father during which he expressed his intense desire to display his work.[47][46]
