Sara Sandri

The LCC undergrad photographer revisiting home, family and heritage all at once

“I visited my mother over the summer, after [I’d been away for] nearly a year. My town had changed drastically, and my home too. I found my mother’s relationship to nature stronger than ever…when I was child, she grew two avocado trees from their seed. They are now colossal. I photographed these trees, and my mother in her garden.”

These are Sara’s own words, referencing her Portuguese mother and the subjects which inform so much of her work: her personal environment and heritage.

Imbuing a conceptual, visceral atmosphere throughout the series we present to you today, Sara tells us that she is “drawn to creating work that is somehow influenced by people around me and the space I inhabit at the time, mostly exploring the personal”. Such a raw subject matter is translated with beautiful poise photographically, most notably in Sara’s portraits of her mother.

While separate series, Lupa’s occasional black and white palette overlaps with that of In Correspondence, a feature which unites the two and ensures Sara’s explorations surrounding memory, heritage and death are clearly articulated.

These series, both individually reverential, are from a working process which Sara tries to keep intuitive, one that has seen her incorporate significant letters and pictures into In Correspondence. It is no surprise that her precocious talent renders such beautiful images, especially when informed by ideas of “displacement, migration and memory” from Julia Kristen, Roland Barthes and Sigmund Freud.

Alongside her studies, Sara has interned at the British Museum and Somerset House, again exploring historical narratives and developing a thorough understanding of a creative working environment. As for her trade, while Sara’s heritage forms the basis of her photography, it is her delicate execution that ensures an enduring relevance to matters which may otherwise have been forgotten.

sarasandri.co.uk