Today we’d like to introduce you to Sean Kobi Sandoval.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Sean Kobi. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I started out by doing skateboard films in high school. At some point, I realized you can actually create artistic films and I tried my own. It went well, but relying on people to help you out with creating my film was super stressful, not to mention I was doing a lot of real estate videos and other video jobs which kind of ruined the medium for me.
Then in 2014 some strange things happened in my life: I randomly found a Nikon DSLR camera, I won a photography contest and the photographer running the contest offered to meet up with me since he was going to be around So Cal in the upcoming weeks, and lastly I got a message via Flickr that a museum in The Netherlands wanted to use one of my photos as apart of their opening exhibition! While I began saving money to fly solo to Europe for the first time, I met with David Talley, the guy who was running the contest I won, who encouraged me to get serious about photography and to start a 365 Project– a project where you create, execute, edit, and publish a brand new photo every day for a year. While I began my project, I ventured to Europe to see the museum, in doing so I fell in love with traveling.
From 2015 – 2017 I traveled to at least 8 different countries seeking new life experiences, art, language, culture, etc. I realized my passion is traveling and creating art through photography, and with USA’s college debt situation being the shit situation that it is, I decided to apply to study for my bachelor’s of photography in Europe, (where it turned out to be cheaper for me to move there to go to college rather than study in my home country). I got accepted and recently completed my first year at The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, The Netherlands, which oddly enough is a five-minute walk from that first museum that asked to use my photo for their exhibition.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Saving money to do all my traveling was pretty wild. I was working an average of 3-5 jobs at a time, trying to buy new camera/computer equipment, while also trying to travel somewhere new every five months and work on my AA degree at OCC, I was miserable putting myself through so much stress. But the worst obstacle was when I got insanely sick for two years. I was in and out of the hospital with the doctors not knowing what was wrong with me, I’ve even had a surgery done. They labeled me with IBS and gave up, a friend of mine said her ex got a non-celiac gluten allergy test done and recommended I should try it, and that turned out to be a solution for my health. I never had a gluten allergy before and nobody in my family has either.
After doing a bunch of research I came to decide that my body was damaged by this country’s poor food quality standards as well as the fact that we are fed so much unnecessary and damaging pills that our bodies are destructing from the inside. My most recent project is an activist photo book calling for improvements in our FDA, here I share my story through a conceptual visual language and include personal doctor’s notes through my time of poor health, I am seeking for publishers now to hope that this publication can be used as a tool for the health quality of our country.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
My work explores conceptual photography disguised as a fine art outcome, moody portraits, exploring poetic viewpoints of the male, along with other-worldly scenes capturing serene stories which may delve into my inner emotions. I create photographs which present the unique way I look at the world and often beyond: I am interested in what stories and experiences in life can mean on a metaphorical level and what they can be turned into when I view them from an unusual viewpoint.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Enjoy the moment for what it is. Don’t stress on where you think you need to be, you are right where you need to be right now, trust yourself and you will end up wherever you need to be in the future.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.seankobisandoval.com
- Phone: +31636511635 (iMessage/WhatsApp)
- Email: seankobisandoval@gmail.com
- Instagram: seankobisandoval
Image Credit:
Lilli Weinstein
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
