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“A place where time stands still, it’s always summer somewhere.”
With these words, Sophie Van der Perre, Belgian photographer who lives and works in Amsterdam, evokes the spirit of her project: a sequence of images tracing a day at the seaside. There are swims and showers, languid pauses beneath the sun, and the pensive, dream-filled gaze of a slender young woman poised between girlhood and becoming.
Before us, a quiet blossoming. A girl smiles with unstudied grace. Her face ignites with light, scattered with freckles that lend her the effortless splendor of youth. Her body tells its own story of fragility and natural delicacy, and Sophie listens, translating that language into photographs. What unfolds is a silent dialogue between photographer, subject, and sea. Above all, one is struck by the buoyancy of these images, their gentle suspension between movement and stillness.
Wind becomes a playful accomplice, tangling long copper hair into unruly halos. There is the intimacy of togetherness, the impulsive embrace for a keepsake photograph, the easing of tension into laughter. Orthodontic braces flash unselfconsciously in bright, unguarded smiles.
These images belong to Young Teens, a project conceived as an act of attentive observation, a reading of lives in their most spontaneous register. Artifice dissolves, contrived poses fall away. What remains is the essential search for free spirits, for authenticity unfiltered. Innocence radiates through Sophie’s lens, a quality that defines much of her oeuvre, devoted predominantly to women.
“I’ve always been drawn to girls with long hair – it evokes nostalgia, capturing fleeting moments of adolescence where innocence and mystery blend. I photographed these young teens in my hometown in Belgium.”
With Lido Lido, another day unfolds by the sea. Sunlight glides across skin. A midnight-blue swimsuit partially veils the elongated form of a girl absorbed in languid abandon. Yet beyond her beauty, it is her gaze that unsettles. She studies us. We feel ourselves examined, momentarily disarmed, compelled to look away.
And then she dives, her body stretching into the infinite line of the horizon, disappearing into waters that have shifted from crystalline green to muted gray. We follow her in thought, tracing the arc of her swim. Where might it carry her? Toward what distant shore?
It is a day like any other at the sea, and yet, through Sophie’s eye, it becomes narrative. A swimsuit is changed discreetly inside a beach cabin nestled among sun-warmed rocks. The surf murmurs. Seashells lie arranged in accidental poetry. Iridescent light saturates the air, transforming the ordinary into something suspended, cinematic. A seaside Dolce Vita, intimate, unhurried, tender.
In her fashion editorials, including the Vitaminé collection for Sessùn, Sophie’s pursuit of creative simplicity remains central, continually refining her unmistakable aesthetic. The sea often lingers in the background, less as scenery than as presence: a luminous force that infuses each frame with radiance and recalls the saturated palette of summer. Light and color, model and garment, merge in seamless harmony, yielding compositions of rare refinement.
Sophie Van der Perre attended the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, developing her personal style from the very beginning—an aesthetic purity that captures emotions. Her imagery, dreamlike yet grounded, moves fluidly between photography and fashion. Published in leading titles such as Vogue NL, Vogue Man, Grazia, W Magazine, Glamour, and Imprint Magazine, her work bridges intimacy and editorial polish.
She has collaborated with brands including Levi’s, Le Bon Marché, Wrangler and Tommy Hilfiger, yet across contexts and commissions, her vision remains unmistakable: an ode to youth, to light, to the sea, and to that suspended season where time, if only briefly, stands still.
