“Here, indeed, is beauty. Sara has the rare skill of drawing out the intimate, the special, the unique spirit of a place.”
Dame Fiona Reynolds
former Director General of the National Trust and former Master of Emmanuel College Cambridge
Cambridge Photographs specialises in architectural photography of heritage sites in Cambridge, England. Over twenty images and two books have been shortlisted for photographic and literary awards including the Architecture MasterPrize, Julia Margaret Cameron Award, Historic Photographer of the Year, International Photo Awards, and the Rubery Book Award. Works have been invited for exhibitions and are held in private collections around the world.
“I love [the book, Focused on King’s College Chapel]. The light is superb, an active agent in its own right, especially the dapples and speckles. Not just an adjunct of form… [This] must be the most handsome tribute ever paid to a single building. With its blend of words and diverse visual voices it is an Alleluia Chorus.”
Martin Kemp
Professor of Art History, Oxford
About Sara
photo by Ian Olsson
Sara Rawlinson is a contemporary photographer specialising in heritage photography and abstract fine art. She has had a camera in her hands most days since she was six years old working in the field and in her grandma’s darkroom. This was then followed by a decade in academic earth science and natural hazards. She returned to photography on a full time basis in 2013.
Many photographs and self-published books have received and been shortlisted for international awards. Sara’s works are held in private and public collections around the world, and she has regular exhibitions worldwide.
Contact her with any queries, including commissions, via heritagephotographs.com
One of Sara’s favourite anecdotes:
At Sara’s Illuminating Cambridge Libraries exhibition, a woman was sliding along the bench looking at the pictures. She was so engrossed that she literally slid right off the end of the bench, landing on the floor with a thud – and very excitedly came to Sara’s next exhibition.
“A beautifully and expensively produced gallery of highly artistic and stunningly executed photographs. There are pictures that give a sense of the soaring scale of this vaulted building, and yet there is also a sharp focus on tiny, charming details that would easily be missed when walking around the chapel. The use of glossy paper shows off the images well, and the photographs are interspersed with poetic musings. It is an outstanding architectural study which successfully captures the historic beauty of a remarkable building.”
review by Rubery Book Award judges (FOCUSED on King’s College Chapel was shortlisted for 2021 Rubery Book Award, Non-Fiction category)
“Here, indeed, is beauty. Sara has the rare skill of drawing out the intimate, the special, the unique spirit of each place. And even if you know these libraries well, these pictures will give you fresh eyes, an enlivened spirit and a gladdened heart.”
Dame Fiona Reynolds, Master, Emmanuel College, Cambridge
“Sara’s book is feast for the eye and imagination. No detail escapes the artist’s lens. The idea of the library is deconstructed into unfamiliar shapes and angles, a shaft of light in a stair well, a solitary chair tucked by a bookcase, a long view up to a decorative ceiling. And yet the whole is put back to together, more than its parts, as we gaze at the photographs and fill the spaces with memory and reverence, for what Sara calls her ‘houses of the holy’.”
Dr Jessica Gardner, The University Librarian, University of Cambridge
“Cambridge is a city with possibly the highest density of libraries in the world. In this visual encomium Sara restricts herself to surveying the libraries of the 31 Colleges of the University, and finds remarkable continuities amid the diversity of buildings spanning more than 500 years. She has an outstanding eye for the quirky detail, the unusual juxtaposition, the wear-and-tear which can upset a perfect symmetry. This book reminds us that these buildings are no mere architectural showpieces, but places of continual use by generations of scholars, the repositories of inherited knowledge which underpin the research and teaching of today.”
Dr Nicolas Bell, Librarian, Trinity College, Cambridge
“I think Sara Rawlinson is a terrific photographer. She has a unique eye. The details and angles she chooses are very unusual, very much her own, but they serve her subject, never herself – the title of the book is well chosen.”
Andrew, New York
“Fabulous – it’s like photography finally meets fine art!”
comment from an exhibition
“Each of your exhibitions is so unique, I can’t wait to see what you do next!”
comment from an exhibition
“Yours has been my favourite exhibition at this gallery, and [whispering] I’ve been to all the others.”
comment from an exhibition
A woman was scooting along the bench looking at the libraries exhibition. She was so engrossed that she literally slid right off the end of the bench (and still excitedly came to my next exhibition).