Sarah was born into a family of musicians, writers, and psychoanalysts. She spent her young childhood concocting gibberish sounds and songs around the house, dancing, and playing cello. She became enraptured by photography when she was thirteen. Small spent her high school years photographing her close friends and her younger red-headed sister, Rachel, wandering the streets of her hometown, Washington DC, equipped with her Pentax K1000.
After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2001, Small moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where she currently resides. Small’s photography and performances have since appeared in Vogue, LIFE, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times, The New Yorker, and have been shown in galleries throughout the United States, as well as in China, Taiwan, Korea, Madrid, Hungary, Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain, Australia, and the Netherlands. In 2008, Small was named by American Photo Magazine as one of the top 13 emerging photographers working today.
In partnership with creative and social enterprise Contaminate NYC, Small and her team are producing a Global Tour of her Tableau Vivant of The Delirium Constructions performance, with the associated hybrid documentary/fiction film expected to release late 2015.
Small sings and composes vocal scores with her two a cappella trios, Black Sea Hotel and Hydra, born from collaborations with Tableau’s musical director Rima Fand and vocalist Yula Be’eri. Black Sea Hotel has appeared on NPR, topping charts on iTunes International, and recently, late 2013, has released their second album, The Forest is Shaking and Swaying. Also in late 2013, Small released to the public a decade of vocal and instrumental soundscape sketches (project currently entitled Jessica Brainstorm), which to date has been a private escapade; Small is currently searching out collaborators to refine and produce this material.
Most recently, Small has become unexpectedly enraptured with film acting while collaborating with friend and director, Josephine Decker, as lead actress in her fantasy/horror psychological thriller, "Butter on the Latch". Sarah is currently pursuing other such thrilling acting opportunities.
At home in her neighborhood in East Williamsburg, Small is renovating a four-car garage in into a photography+film studio, performance event space, and community center for local artists of all disciplines, expected to launch Spring 2014.
