Sophie Saunders is a Chicago-born Los Angeles-based photographer and creative. She is driven by her interactions with people in public spaces and documents the world around her with primarily analog photographic processes. She is inspired by the idea that physical photographs function as objects, not just images. Her work embraces the tangible nature of film, conveying textures and color palettes that are nostalgic for a pre-digital age. Sophie also works with alternative printing processes such as Van Dyke Brown cyanotype, combining modern techniques or AI with obsolete technologies. Sophie is interested in how photographs can change overtime, and her work becomes an archive of her own experiences with the world around her.
About Me
Exhibitions:
Abstract, Chicago Photography School, April-June 2024
Photography Show, Composite, TPK Student Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, 2024-2025
Make it Make Sense, Senior Fine Arts Thesis, TPK Student Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, March-April 2025
Contact: sophiejunephoto@gmail.com
Recent exhibitions
Recent exhibitions
Hollywoodland, 2025
Make it Make Sense, Senior Thesis Exhibition
Hollywood’s landscape is shaped by its affinity for spectacle and familiarity with reinvention. Once the epicenter of the entertainment industry, Hollywood boulevard now lives in a state of contradiction: abandoned theaters and fading neon signs coexist with new developments and tourist buses promising to take you up the hill to Justin Bieber’s home.
My project Hollywoodland investigates this shifting landscape, capturing its storied past and precarious present. Through digital and medium format film photography, this project documents a neighborhood in constant transformation. The echoes of obsolete technologies underpin Hollywood’s latest existential crisis. Rising production costs, industry strikes, mass layoffs, and the rapid encroachment of AI all point to an era of upheaval–one reminiscent of transitions that have shaped Hollywood before. From the gritty and chaotic boulevard to the architectural ghosts of the Golden Age, Hollywood presents a visual dialogue. It is a meditation on the love-hate relationship Angelenos share with this neighborhood–a mythologized, abandoned and celebrated place that is integral to Los Angeles' identity.