Sabrina Santiago Is Adding a Woman’s Touch to the Canon of Street Photography

AGE: 28
BASED IN: New York
NOMINATED BY: Justine Kurland

The throughline in a lot of my work, I would say, is environment. What are the environments we find ourselves in? One in particular I've been investigating is the street. Historically, women and people who looked like me weren't documenting public space and I feel like archives hold so much power and weight.

Street photography, over time, gives a sense of people and culture and place. I'm trying to show, from my point of view as an artist, whose stories are worth telling. All of my photos feel like self-portraits, because even if they're of other people, there is an inner reflection that's happening, whether we look similar or I feel like I haven't seen that person documented before on the street.

Memory is so fleeting and the photos are a prolongation of memory and time. I'm able to remember things I would never be able to remember, even if it's just the woman who just passed me on the street. I've probably walked [the Williamsburg Bridge] thousands and thousands of times. Certain streets remind me of photos I've taken in the past. I feel like we're always just passing past versions of ourselves.