| The images I’m driven to make are often a mystery, even to myself. Impressions, feelings and ideas come to me unexpectedly. When I meet people and hear their stories, I’m fascinated and left with a desire to explore what can happen between us in front of the camera. Forests, created sets, and nightscapes are the places I haunt most frequently for my picture-making. Peculiar moments and the darker side of things underscore my photographs. While my images tend to be somewhat dark, I attempt to infuse them with a certain amount of magic, beauty, and hope. I want to create a consistent visual aesthetic throughout my work. | 
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Sarah Wilmer
Courtesy of the artist.The images I’m driven to make are often a mystery, even to myself. Impressions, feelings and ideas come to me unexpectedly. When I meet people and hear their stories, I’m fascinated and left with a desire to explore what can happen between us in front of the camera. Forests, created sets, and nightscapes are the places I haunt most frequently for my picture-making. Peculiar moments and the darker side of things underscore my photographs. While my images tend to be somewhat dark, I attempt to infuse them with a certain amount of magic, beauty, and hope. I want to create a consistent visual aesthetic throughout my work.
I work from a personal and powerful place guided by intuition: when I try to think back and explain my process, it seems almost trance-like. When the ache to photograph strikes, I’m unable to fall asleep. This insomnia persists annoyingly until I begin to work by writing and sketching out ideas in my notebook until the desire becomes a focused mission. I orchestrate scenarios with the subjects I have found, pairing them up with the right location in my head. Next, I think of what I want to happen when we get together in person. More often than not, this involves elements of play, theatrics, and experimentation, in other words, creating a reaction to the environment we’ve steeped ourselves in. Personally, I have a desire to experience the surreal and otherworldly, and most of the people I’ve worked with have also expressed this longing. The whole experience is very intimate and unique.
As a musician as well as an artist, I am very much influenced by music, specifically artists with rich lyrics containing powerful visuals. Joanna Newsom, The Rachels, Smog, and White Magic are just a few of the artists I’m inspired by. Dutch and Flemish master paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries also bring me great delight, and the stories of Banana Yoshimoto and Edgar Allen Poe slay me every time. The work of Edward Gorey and the films of David Lynch, Dario Argento, and Jodorowsky are other sources of joy, but honestly, my cat Tubs remains my biggest inspiration.
