SANDiiA and the Jazz Degree She Never Uses

By Zach Collier

Photos by SANDiiA

Inspiration happens so unexpectedly.

“I’ve lived here for about six years, but I kind of don’t count the first three years because the pandemic happened,” Los Angeles-based photographer and artist SANDiiA tells me from her California studio. While she was fortunate enough during the pandemic to work at Milk Studios – lighting and photo assisting – she never really got to get out and explore LA. Those first three years were so isolated that it didn’t really feel like she was actually there. It took her a while to find her footing and to find her way. “My journey has been pretty crazy,” she says.

Finding her way through a series of detours has been a theme in SANDiiA’s life. She has a knack for creating structure out of chaos. Of Peruvian descent, SANDiiA is originally from Miami. The area she came from was a melting pot of Latin culture. Venezuelans, Colombians, Cubans, Jamaicans, Haitians. All very different from New England, where she eventually left Florida for.

Music took her up north. SANDiiA’s heart was always set on the arts. Her original goal was music, and her first love was the piano. “I moved to Boston because I went to music school. I went to Berklee.” SANDiiA drops this information as if it’s no big deal. It’s not like Berklee alumni have won 310 Grammy Awards or 108 Latin Grammy Awards or anything.

Studying jazz piano, she was fortunate enough to attend Berklee on scholarship. But while tuition was free, rent and groceries were not. “I was at Berklee for two and a half years. And while I was there, I needed to pay my bills,” she laughs. “I realized musicians needed photos. Berklee has sister programs with all the Boston colleges. So I got to take a photo program. So that's how I got introduced to photo. And I was just making money off of taking photos.”

She survived the financial crucible of college in America by diving into a new skill – all while completing a rigorous jazz piano program. “I always think it's funny when people ask me in an interview for a photographer position, like, ‘Oh, did you go to school?’ and I'm like, ‘Yeah, I have a jazz degree.’” She laughs as she explains that photography is what led her to LA – not music.

But that jazz background influences how she approaches art in general. Everyone knows that jazz is heavy on improvisation. But anyone familiar with jazz knows that improvisation, while spontaneous, is not random. It’s driven by years of practice, by a solid understanding of complex harmony, and the ability to borrow hundreds of licks and melodies on a whim and turn them into something new. Every jazz soloist has hundreds of licks or motifs in their back pocket, waiting to be used in a pinch.

So what are some of SANDiiA’s photography licks? “The fact that I've been lighting assisting and in studios for the past three years essentially created a method, which is how people have their licks, you know?” she explains. “It's a familiarity that they know that they can go to. I feel very strong in the lighting world. I know if I look at a reference, I know how I want it to look – how I want it to ‘sound.’ And so a go-to of mine is reflective light. It’s really punchy in the shadows. I realized a lot of people really tend to go for those more than soft, beauty light. My licks would be knowing light. I know what's gonna look good on a certain face – what's gonna create more dramatic storytelling. I can tell you it's literally a reflector with a plexiglass going straight up using barn doors. That's my lick.”

While SANDiiA loves lighting, she loves expressing herself in bold, artistic ways using photography as a medium. She loves being behind the lens and showing viewers what the world looks like through her eyes. But, much like paying the bills in college, funding artsy passion projects can be difficult.

Luckily, SANDiiA was recently confronted with a long LA summer. “Sometimes it’s hard to get jobs in LA during the summer,” she says. Freelance photography is a super competitive industry to break into, especially if you live in a major city. “But this friend of mine who has a group house, he was like, ‘Oh, you need to come and use the studio space.’ He basically forced me because I hadn’t been doing a lot of photoshoots because I’d been busy with lighting.”

So SANDiiA suddenly had a space, she had a date, she had a challenge. And she’d been itching to create something – to really express herself. But now she needed a solid concept. “But I wasn't feeling really passionate about a lot of things at the moment because I was just working a lot,” she says. “You know when you get stuck in work? Like, I was in a creative field, but I was just like, okay, fine. I'm good at lighting.”

Fortunately, in a strange twist of fate, SANDiiA had found herself on BugTok. “You know how the algorithm somehow knows what you're into? I'm like on insect Instagram right now,” she laughs. “And it's all just portraits of insects and whatever. And this one shot of a butterfly came up and it really inspired me. It looked like it was shot in-studio. And it probably wasn't, but they edited it in a way where it looked like it was shot under studio lights.”

Why in the world was the algorithm serving her generous amounts of bug photos? SANDiiA had recently been back home in Peru. “We went to a butterfly sanctuary and it was in the Amazon,” she recalls. “It was just this one lady working by herself. She's saving butterflies in the middle of nowhere! No one cares about her job and she's just happy. And her passion for explaining the different butterflies really inspired me.”

She had her concept. So she reached out to a friend – model and folk musician Taliha Abdiel. “I showed her a photo of a butterfly, and I showed her some lighting references. She was like, ‘Okay. Bet. Let’s do it.’” Suddenly everything was moving really, really fast.

Things really ramped up when SANDiiA found a kindred spirit in their stylist, Ron Ben. “He happened to be Peruvian. So immediately we hit it off,” she laughs. “And I showed him the reference. I told him I wanted it to be very dynamic. I was just like, ‘get some pieces with volume and then we'll figure it out.’”

But he was hooked on the idea, too. When he came back, he had a balloon dress that looked like a caterpillar. And a sci-fi outfit that reminded SANDiiA of a cocoon. And a strong, phase-centric concept surrounding metamorphosis was born.

The day of the shoot was a whirlwind. “Now we’re all improvising,” SANDiiA says. “That’s where I felt really confident. I wasn’t afraid in that moment. I feel like maybe a few years ago, when things wouldn’t go to plan, I could have not trusted the process. But this time I just said no. I have plenty of people here. We’re all doing something cool. It ended up perfectly.”

The result was SANDiiA’s KiiND OF MOTH.

“I’m still shocked at how it all came together thanks to the help of friends and community,” SANDiiA says. “This took a lot of improvisation and trust, from finding a studio space to assembling a beautiful team of talented individuals. Inspiration sometimes happens so unexpectedly. There was so much that happened last minute, but it was beautiful to embrace the spontaneity and make the most of creative opportunities. This project is a labor of love and blending of influences. It’s called KiiND OF MOTH as a nod to Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis – in honor of the jazz piano degree I never use.”


What does tmrw mean to you?

I was actually talking about this on set with my friend yesterday. I had a song that I wrote when I was at Berklee. I called it “A Year From Now.” It asked, “If I'm afraid today, what would happen tomorrow? If not now, then when?” Just go for it, because there will be a tomorrow. In a year from now, I'll look back and think, “Wow. I've gone so much farther.”