Sarah Straussberg Reveals Latest Commission

Straussberg has been commissioned for this award for the past five years, with previous winners including photographers: Sebastião Salgado, Don McCullen, Taryn Simon and Edward Burtynsky. This year’s winner is highly influential photographer Stephen Shore.

Shore is a widely published photographer, and has been working in the industry for the past forty-five years. He was the first living photographer to have a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since Alfred Stieglitz, forty years earlier. He has also had one-man shows at George Eastman House, Rochester; Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Jeu de Paume, Paris; and Art Institute of Chicago. In 2017, the Museum of Modern Art opened a major retrospective spanning Stephen Shore's entire career. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His series of exhibitions at Light Gallery in New York in the early 1970s sparked new interest in colour photography and in the use of the view camera for documentary work.

Sarah Straussberg has a background in sculpture and draws her main inspiration from patterns and textures in nature. Using geometry and form to create shapes that are expressive of modern minimalism, her work is a contemporary study in generative simplicity. 

Sarah handcrafts every piece in her London studio, using sterling silver with 18ct gold plate to create jewellery that is elegant and wearable. She also enjoys working with 18ct gold, often accentuating her distinctive aesthetic with diamonds, pearls or black resin.
 
As a practitioner of traditional techniques, Sarah also uses 3D printing in select ranges to bring shapes to life in new ways, opening up the potential of her guiding principles.

For the award itself Straussberg took inspiration from Shore’s photography which expresses the true essence of Los Angeles in 1969 with a focus on branded signage against open skies and strong, classical materials. 

Straussberg comments: “The retro feel of the signage was the guiding force behind this project, with linear patterns that distort with expansion. I wanted to accentuate this by using layers which increase in height as well as space."

The award was introduced by Photo London which was created to give London an international photography event which emphasises the city’s status as a global cultural capital. Photo London harnesses the city’s outstanding creative talent and brings the world’s leading photographers, curators, exhibitors and dealers together with the public to celebrate photography, the medium of our time.