About

Heartless Twyla (Twyla Sampaco) is a queer Filipina-American photographer and self-published author based in Seattle, WA. Preferring old, gifted, and novelty film cameras, she makes the most of faulty shutters and ambient light; reprocessing unresolved trauma with the romance of plastic lenses, leaking light seals, and inconsistent film advance mechanisms. Her hybrid analog-digital photographic process gives her something tangible to hold in her hands and creative latitude for expressing emotional truth.

Twyla is the lead art walk curator at Blue Cone Studios, a resident artist at BelRed Arts Studio, and is the Photographic Center Northwest Basement Monster. Her photographs have been exhibited at Solas Gallery, Vermillion Gallery, A-Gallery, the Wing Luke Museum, and the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center. In 2021, she self-published her first book, “Technicolor Nightmare", a photo memoir about surviving bipolar disorder in her twenties. Twyla’s current projects are surviving bipolar disorder in her forties, and completing her next book.