Meet Sandy Sorlien | Photographer, Writer, Researcher

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sandy Sorlien and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sandy, do you have a favorite quote or affirmation?

It’s tough to pick one because I have a sketchbook into which I’ve scribbled many of my favorite quotes about art and exploration. Because you asked this question, I just looked at the book again for the first time in many years. I knew the quote I wanted, by William Least Heat-Moon from his book Blue Highways, which influenced me tremendously starting in the 1980s. But now that I see all these other great quotes that I wrote down decades ago, I’ll have to pick three. This first one is about education.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” – Antione de Saint-Exupery.

The next quote is one that both Heat-Moon and I followed for our first books and seemed to reinterpret for our next, when instead of traveling the breadth of the country for stories we dug deep into a smaller patch of ground. Yet the net of research and storytelling still gets cast widely, and from my home studio I say thank goodness for the Internet. What a world of time and place! Here’s that passage:

“Of all the visions of the Grandfathers the greatest is this: To seek the high concord, a man looks not deeper within – he reaches farther out.”

And finally, as a baseball fan and photographer I particularly love this one:

“You can see a lot by just looking.” – Yogi Berra

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I graduated from college in 1976 with a BA in painting and printmaking, but back then no one seemed to think much about how we’d make a living. No counselor gave me any advice about going to graduate school. At Putney and Bennington we were supposed to figure things out for ourselves. Try things and make mistakes. Get over rejections quick. Use your failures to make something else. That resilience has served me well as a maker and manager of ambitious projects, and as a cobbler-together of freelance gigs like taxi driver, urban code editor, and travel writer. But not having an MFA probably delayed my art teaching career at least ten years, and I was self-taught in photography, also a late process. Eventually some fine Philadelphia-area schools accepted my exhibition record and other experience in place of the Masters degree, but you can’t start out that way. Thanks to the first photography department head who hired me, Christine Welch, and the second, Alida Fish, as their trust made all the difference. Leading me to the Society for Photographic Education was also huge, so thanks to Alida and Jeannie Pearce and many others at the University of the Arts for that.

I’m not sure what sets me apart, as I can think of plenty of other photographers who also work in decades-long projects, do extensive field work, and layer different disciplines and time periods. I guess it’s unusual to be a woman alone knocking on strangers’ doors all over the country to photograph their houses, as I did thirty-plus years ago. But because of a sudden career turn after Hurricane Katrina, working ten years in town planning with the visionary New Urbanists, some of my long projects were never published and were barely shown. Those include “Ocean/Prairie” panoramic landscapes and “The Heart of Town: Main Streets in America.”

It’s hard for me now to go back to those hundreds of unprinted negatives and make a book. I would rather move on to new things because I really love not knowing ANYTHING about a subject or place and then learning all about it. How did I get to be expert in a 19th century slackwater-canal navigation system? Crazy. Now I love research, the more nitpicky the better. Discovering, learning, knowing, and showing are all connected in a satisfying way. Perhaps that’s a legacy of our grade school Show and Tell sessions, which may have also made me a collector – of marbles, maps, souvenirs, and photographed places.

I am glad I did manage to publish two very long projects, twenty years apart. In 2002 it was Fifty Houses: Images from the American Road,” and in 2022 it was “Inland: The Abandoned Canals of the Schuylkill Navigation.” They aren’t perfect works but I’m relieved they’re out there finding the right small audiences.

I did most of my exploring alone. I used to to tell my students just go out and explore by yourself. You won’t be lonely if you talk to at least one person a day, preferably in a diner, or just talk to birds. (Yo grackle, what’s happening.) Of course the Internet has changed exploring. You have more connections (that’s good and bad) and more influence, and I suppose more safety. For all of Fifty Houses (1988-1995) I was out there covering 90,000 miles of American back roads without even a CB radio, consulting only paper maps, AAA TourBooks, and the advice of strangers. I developed my film in motel bathrooms. It was great.

Now at 70 I still go tromping around by myself to photograph and yes I do print out my maps first. As a fun addition to the Pennsylvania adventures, I also take groups of “Navigators” on tours to see canal ruins and river desilting sites. We moved to Rhode Island a few years ago, so lately I’m photographing abandoned Rhode Island coastal forts, their layers of history and their absence, and will be presenting an exhibition called “Fort Territory” at the Out of the Box Gallery in Jamestown RI at the end of 2024.

When I can get back to Pennsylvania, I’ll finish photographing the Schuylkill Water Gap and the little borough nestled there, Port Clinton. It was a critical stop on the 108-mile navigation system that I spent ten years on for “Inland.” It’s a beautiful spot on my home river to get into a deeper history before I have to leave it for good. Because the Gap has been a transportation nexus for centuries, I’m calling this project “The Way Through.”

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Even though I moved to Rhode Island six years ago, I’ll take my friend on an excursion along the Schuylkill River Valley in Pennsylvania to end up in Philadelphia, my home town.This friend will like hiking, baseball, beer or mocktails, trains, animals, and restaurants. Mountains to tidewater, here we go:
– Port Clinton and Auburn PA, hiking in the Schuylkill Gap, day trip on the steam train or visit the rail yard
– Hamburg PA, Reading Railroad Heritage Museum, then dinner and beer at 1787 Brewing Company
– Reading PA, Berks County Heritage Center
– Reading, attend the AA (Phillies) Reading Fightins ballgame
– Berks, Chester, Montgomery Counties, see historic canal sites like Allegheny Aqueduct, Schuylkill Canal Park
– beer and dinner at Fitzwater Station on the canal
– Valley Forge Park, north section, hiking and virtual Adventure Lab
– Norristown Dam, birding
– Manayunk and Roxborough, Philadelphia – all of it! Walk along the canal, shop/eat on Main Street and Ridge Ave, climb the hills, go out on the Ivy Ridge Trail high bridge
– Wissahickon Park – hiking and birding, dine at Valley Green Inn
– Philadelphia Zoo, America’s First Zoo and now a progressive one
– Philadelphia – the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center
– Heinz Refuge for walking and birding
– catch a Phillies game and get your cheesesteak there

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Let’s do a shoutout to my husband John and our furry family, who have been forgiving when I’ve gone on my countless field trips, and who take care of each other when I can’t. They greet me at the door and don’t even seem mad that I took the good car.

Professionally and as a friend, thank you to Stephen Perloff who created an incredibly supportive, interesting, and fun photography community in the Philadelphia area, where I spent most of my life.

And more recently, I shout happily to the rambunctious explorers of the Schuylkill Navigation Facebook Group. That “reaching farther out” thing can also happen virtually, especially when you’re exploring 200-year-old canal routes on your daily posts.

Website: https://sandysorlienphotographs.zenfolio.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/schuylkillnavigation

Other: http://www.gftbooks.com/books_Sorlien.html

Image Credits
Photographs by Sandy Sorlien Cover Design by David Skolkin and Deborah Larkin