Sophia Vital
Looking into Bath
As a first-generation university student in my final year of university, I have taken every opportunity to diversify my background in the arts. Being on my photography journey for almost a decade now, I have had the chance to contribute my work in a variety of realms, ranging anywhere from portraits to live music. But my favorite by far has been street photography.
In the Fall of 2024, I participated in a Global Exchange program in the English coastal city of Brighton, where I had the incredible opportunity to travel to over a dozen cities. During those months, I was fully immersed in countless new environments and experiences, which allowed me to deeply transform both creatively as an artist, and personally as an individual.
While these cities were rich with centuries of history, art, and architecture, what I found most rewarding was observing the people of each location. Like most photographers, I never leave home without a camera, and I was consistently drawn to the more simple, quiet humanity in the scenes of everyday life in comparison to the generally attention-grabbing monuments most people turn their cameras to.
The photograph on display was taken during a visit to Bath, a city famous for its historic Roman Baths. After a full day of exploration, as I was walking back to the hostel, a local bookstore caught my eye. The warm light spilling from the store and the symmetry of their placements inviting me to back up and take another look, an almost daunting contrast to the darkness of the surrounding streets I had been trailing. This image captures not just the charm of the small city, but also those subtle, profound moments of connection that are everywhere, if only you just take a moment to notice them.
If you are interested in her work and would like to see more, Sophia often adds of photos of her travels and other captured moments onto the Instagram account by the name of @shotbyascorpio.