NEW YORK, NY.- ERIS announced the release of River of Becoming: The Life and Times of Lucas Samaras, by Michael Skafidas: the first comprehensive and richly illustrated biography of Lucas Samaras, the revolutionary artist whose work reshaped self‑portraiture, photography, and conceptual art in the late twentieth century. River of Becoming will be published on February 10, 2026 in both paperback and deluxe hardcover editions, presenting readers with an immersive exploration of Samaras’s life, art, and singular vision.

Lucas Samaras emerged from post‑war Greece into the New York avant‑garde, where he became renowned for his fearless engagement with material, identity, and the mechanics of seeing. From his immersive installations to his obsessive self‑portraits and experimental Polaroids, Samaras anticipated the visual self‑awareness that defines today’s digital era. His art, boundaryless, sometimes visceral, always prescient, is meticulously chronicled in River of Becoming, the definitive account of his artistic evolution and personal journey.

From Greece to New York — A Transcontinental Life in Art

Early Years: Samaras’s childhood in Greece forms the emotional core of his aesthetic sensibility. New York Avant‑Garde: His breakthrough came amidst the vibrant intersections of minimalism, performance, conceptualism, and photography. Photography & Polaroids: Sa‑ maras’s immersive photographic experiments: his “Auto‑Polaroids” presaged contemporary concerns about identity, the body, and medi‑ ated self‑representation.

Michael Skafidas is a lecturer in Comparative Literature at Queens College, City University of New York, and holds a doctorate from the CUNY Graduate Center. His academic work bridges literature, visual culture, and critical theory, making him uniquely positioned to interpret Samaras’s complex, multifaceted career. River of Be- coming represents the culmination of years of research and personal engagement with Samaras’s legacy.


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