"I've always been fascinated by their rhythms, contradictions, and the human stories within them - beauty, solitude, dreams, melancholy, chance. From early on, I wanted to elevate those street moments into something more cinematic, to find the scenes that already felt staged within everyday life."
"My work connects to the emotional and atmospheric impact of the place. When I walk through a city, I'm drawn both to how spaces look and to how they feel - how architecture, light or weather can shift the tone of a moment."
"a map of my visual universe, images created over seven years, from many places, forming a poetic, parallel reflection of the world as I perceive it"
"I've always perceived the world through a slightly surreal lens, as if another, dreamlike universe exists alongside the real one. For me, it's less about surrealism as an art movement than about a way of seeing, finding the uncanny or dreamlike within the ordinary. My images often balance between those two layers of perception."
Sarah van Rij was drawn to life in large cities and began photographing their rhythms, contradictions, and human stories: beauty, solitude, dreams, melancholy, and chance. She elevates street moments into cinematic, staged-feeling vignettes using shadows, thresholds, reflections, movement, and unusual crops to disrupt perception and create surreal atmospheres. Her work connects to the emotional and atmospheric impact of place, responding to how architecture, light, and weather shift the tone of a moment. Atlas of Echoes serves as a map of her visual universe, compiling images made over seven years across many places. Painting and cinema, especially the silver screen, shape her compositional approach.
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