As a young photographer in the early 1980s, what she calls the “pre-digital, largely un-air-conditioned era, when people fled the heat of their houses to hang out in their yards and on the street”, Sage Sohier would drive around near where she lived in New England, or on trips to southern states, in search of what she thought of as Americans “in their environment”. During lockdown, she went back through those negatives and contact sheets and discovered many images that she had never printed. The best of these are collected in a new book, Passing Time.
In her introduction to that book, Sohier remarks on the “kind of relaxed sensuality” revealed in those pictures: “Time moved more slowly, restlessness led to spontaneous play. Young people back then were fit and lean from running around outside with their friends and neighbours.”
