Sarah Wong studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy for Visual Art and Design. Her photographs express her search to capture the soul. In her work she is drawn to idealistic and delicate subjects that demand a very positive approach. After art school, she wrote several film scripts about the relationship between humanity and the world we live in. This led in 1995 to the Environmental Boulevard, a series of 8 giant portraits. Now familiar green themes played a major role in these emotional stills, 3x3 metres in size. In cooperation with the City of Amsterdam, she presented the billboards as an outdoor exhibition on Museumplein beside the Van Gogh Museum. The exhibition made her the focus of international attention. Sarah went on to take photographs for many international clients. Since 1997 she has regularly portrayed the Italian singer Andrea Bocelli for his CD covers. In 2004, she photographed an impressive annual report for the ABN AMRO Bank in cooperation with a children's circus. And for the international consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. she makes portraits of all the consultants every year. Her first book, entitled Sophia's Children was published in early 2003. In cooperation with this children's hospital in Rotterdam, she spent three years portraying the children's strength while they look so vulnerable. Her greatest challenge was to reveal the soul of this world-famous children's hospital in the book. The children posed proudly for her camera and boldly showed off their tubes and plasters. The exhibition Sophia's Children was put on show at the Naarden International Photo Festival. In the Dutch daily newspaper De Volkskrant, Sarah published a striking series of portraits in 2003 of cross-gender children. These children were born as boys and felt like girls, or vice versa. This publication evoked many positive reactions in Holland and abroad, because so little is acknowledged about these children internationally. The portraits were published to make people aware and to inform them about this vulnerable group. The Netherlands is the only country in the world where these children are helped by a special research team at Amsterdam's VU Medical Centre. With journalist Ellen de Visser, Sarah followed the developments of these children for a photobook that will appear in 2009 with an accompanying exhibition. |