“I’m at home in big cities….There are so many people moving through their own worlds with their own stories — I just try to capture a small part of that.”
A lone figure walks down a dimly lit Tokyo alley, the glow of passing headlights shimmering across rain-slick asphalt. Their umbrella catches the light as reflections dance across the wet glass and steel that frame the street. Who are they? Where are they going? It is a fleeting, everyday moment—yet suspended in Eren Sarigül’s frame, it becomes something more: a fragment from a larger, unseen story.
Such scenes typify the Londoners’ work—poetic, cinematic, and quietly introspective. His images capture the pulse of the city while distilling its chaos into stillness: moments of solitude amid the noise, movement within calm. Through reflections, slow shutter speeds, and the soft diffusion of light, Sarigül transforms the urban landscape into something lyrical, rendering the ordinary extraordinary.
Sarigul’s fascination with visual storytelling began long before he picked up a camera. “Growing up, I always had an interest in both photography and film,” he recalls, though it wasn’t until a trip to Japan—a place that has long inspired artists and filmmakers, from Sofia Coppola to photographer Greg Girard—that his passion truly took hold.
On a whim, he bought a small point-and-shoot camera and immediately fell in love with street photography. “Being able to capture the stories of my trip and show them to family back home was really special to me,” he says. That simple act of observation and sharing marked the beginning of his photographic journey.
While photography is his medium, cinema remains his greatest source of inspiration. The films of Wong Kar-Wai, with their dreamy palettes and aching sense of longing, have left a lasting mark, as have classics like Goodfellas and Blade Runner. “I feel most inspired to shoot after watching films with beautiful cinematography,” he explains. This cinematic influence is unmistakable in his imagery, each frame is charged with atmosphere and narrative tension, as though lifted from a film’s quiet in-between moments.
Sarigul draws inspiration from masters like—Ara Guler, Ernst Haas, Saul Leiter, and Harry Gruyaert—yet his style remains distinctly his own. Like his influences (Guler aside who is known for his monochrome work), he uses color not simply to depict, but to evoke; light and shadow become emotional tools, and reflections—through glass, puddles, or rain—serve as portals between realities. “I try to merge street photography with a bit of a fine art style,” he explains. “I’m not looking to simply document what I see—I want to present it in a visually interesting way.”
For Sarigul, the beauty of street photography lies in its unpredictability. “You never know exactly what you’re going to get,” he says. The street is a living stage—fluid, spontaneous, and filled with endless possibility. While he often roams and explores, he can just as easily wait for hours if a particular scene holds promise.
This patient curiosity gives his images their quiet intensity: each one feels discovered rather than constructed, as if the city itself offered up the composition.
Urban life is his natural habitat. From his home city of London to Paris, Tokyo, and New York, he is drawn to places alive with motion and mystery: “the bigger and crazier they are, the more interesting they are to shoot in.” In these vast metropolises, Sarigul finds intimacy in anonymity, isolating moments that might otherwise dissolve into the flow of the crowd: a figure beneath an umbrella, a fleeting reflection in a train window, a burst of neon in the rain.
“I like changing where I shoot,” he says. “Shooting in the same place constantly can make you blind to the smaller details.” This instinct for renewal keeps his eye sharp, allowing him to see afresh wherever he goes. London remains a constant—“because it’s home”—while Istanbul offers familiarity and nostalgia, New York serves as “a playground for street photographers,” and Tokyo holds special meaning as the place where his journey began.
Over the years, Sarigul’s approach has evolved alongside his understanding of the medium. Entirely self-taught, his education has been forged through practice, observation, and the study of the masters. “I pretty much taught myself how to shoot just by going out and shooting,” he reflects. “One of the biggest changes is just taking more care and thought over what I shoot.” That deliberate restraint lends his recent work a sense of refinement, each frame imbued with atmosphere and emotional weight.
Though his images hum with cinematic energy, they are often meditative, even melancholy. Each feels like a fragment from a larger narrative, an open-ended story caught between movement and stillness, light and shadow. In freezing such fleeting instants, Sarigul reminds us of photography’s quiet poetry: its ability to find beauty in the ephemeral, and to reveal, in the pulse of the city, a reflection of ourselves.
All images © Eren Sarigul