From One Photographer’s Sensuous Portrait of Life in New York by Orla Brennan
Assembled with the warmth of a family album, Small Death is a work of unusual beauty. It maps a fragmented, ten-year journey through the artist’s years living in the States, painstakingly selected from an archive of over 500 rolls of film. It grapples with various themes central to Sandoval’s life in this period, but the overarching question it bravely asks is: does a version of you die when you move to a new place? Painting a layered and personal portrait of what it means to be an immigrant in America today, the resulting book moves gesturally between golden hour streetscapes, searching nudes, abstractions and tender images of her loved ones. Offering a poignant reflection on borders and belonging, Small Death is released during a time when immigrant lives are under threat in Trump’s America, making its subject matter all the more pressing.