His images do not chase the obvious. They resist the clarity of resolution, the immediacy of celebration, the visual language we’ve come to expect from sports imagery. Instead, they linger. They move toward something less defined—toward the invisible structures that hold an experience together.

Sorensen’s path into photography reflects that same sensibility. It is neither direct nor predetermined, but shaped by movement across disciplines—first through music, studying and performing jazz for over a decade, then through design, immersed in the evolving culture of endurance cycling, and eventually into photography as a way of translating those lived experiences into images. Each phase carries forward a shared language: an attentiveness to what cannot be immediately seen.

It is perhaps in New York—where running culture has grown into a collective, almost underground energy—that his work has found its most natural terrain. Here, sport spills into the city. It occupies streets, bridges, early mornings and late nights. It becomes less about competition and more about presence, about community, about a shared momentum that moves through bodies and across spaces. 

Going back to the beginning, what first sparked the idea of picking up a camera and making photographs? What was the path that led you to becoming the photographer you are today? How did that process unfold?

“My background is a little unconventional. I’ve moved through several creative fields in my life to get to where I am now. I originally studied music in college – jazz, specifically – and after that I played professionally for about twelve years, living in Seattle, San Francisco and New York.

That career began to shift when I moved back to San Francisco and got into clothing design. I was designing clothes for a small cycling brand there, and because it was such a small company, everyone wore multiple hats. I’d always had cameras around me and had used them in different ways throughout my work, but when I joined that brand I really immersed myself in cycling culture. Endurance sports became a huge part of my daily life. The company was constantly on the road, at events, out in the field, participating in and documenting everything happening around this emerging culture, gravel riding, and these huge efforts where people would go out into the middle of nowhere and ride 200 miles. My role there, among other things, became photographer for the brand. I was shooting all the lifestyle work, along with a lot of the narrative, brand-building stories that were naturally emerging out of that world.

I was with them for six years, and then I moved to New York – about five years ago now. When I arrived in New York, I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going to land or what field I was going to fully commit to. It took me about a year and half to understand that freelance photography was what I wanted to pursue. During that period I kept cycling, but New York is really a running city. The running culture here completely absorbed me. I became part of it through the different run clubs that were popping up, through the underground unsanctioned races, by simply being present and photographing what was happening.

There had already been a strong run-club history in New York for around a decade before I arrived, but about four years ago it felt like everything was accelerating. There was so much momentum, and I think I arrived at a really important moment in New York running culture – a moment when a lot of things came together at once. That has completely reshaped the trajectory of my career. Most of my work now lives in running, and that’s true across nearly all of the brands I work with.”

How do you personally see sport through your lens? What is it that really interests you as an artist when you photograph it?

“My perspective on sport, and really my perspective as an artist in general, has always been shaped by an interest in what is invisible. I’m less interested in the finish line and much more interested in the journey – in the poetics of the journey, in the relationship an athlete has with the sport itself.

What intrigues me most is the intangible experience of being in the middle of a very hard effort. That’s what I try to capture with my photography. The quiet moments. The moments that aren’t always visible. Whether it’s a track meet, a marathon, or an ultra race, the event itself is almost less important to me than the relationship to the event. That’s what I’m always searching for. Honestly, that theme has followed me my whole life – even when I was playing music. It’s always been the invisible parts of life that interest me most. Those are the moments that actually construct our lives and give them a foundation, even if we don’t always pay attention to them. We tend to focus on the highlights – this moment, that moment, another big moment – and of course those matter. But what makes those moments possible are all the things in between.

That’s where my attention goes: to the in-between. I think that’s especially compelling in photography, because when I’m able to capture one of those moments, there is more ambiguity in what’s happening. There is more room for interpretation. That’s a constant thread in my work as well: I never want an image to feel finished. I don’t want the story to be fully laid out and explained in a single frame. It’s important to me that whoever looks at the image can bring their own story into it. It shouldn’t feel final. It should always feel in motion.”

Was there always something in sport that drew you in, even before photography? Was sport already something that stayed with you from when you were young, or did that relationship develop later in life?

“I grew up playing all kinds of sports, so my familiarity with games, with play, and with the joy that comes from those experiences definitely comes from childhood. But if I go a little deeper than that, I think I’ve always just been fascinated by watching people move their bodies. Even as a child, I think I saw it as a kind of expression. Yes, of course, you’re playing a game. Yes, you’re trying to win. But I think what I loved most was the act of doing it – the act of moving. That’s what appealed to me from the beginning. As I got older, what became especially interesting was movement and repetition in endurance sports: what happens to the body, what happens to the mind, what happens across a long effort.

For me it has always been movement-focused. Whether I was playing or watching, I was just entranced by it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. That’s still what draws me in now – I’m deeply curious about the way people move their bodies. I’m interested in all different kinds of bodies, moving in all different ways. I think that’s kind of amazing. So for me it’s never really been about spectacle. It’s about experience – and about everything connected to sport, especially the more introspective parts of it.”

Moving to New York – a city where sport is central, historically and culturally – was there a specific team, group of people, or group of athletes that gave you the inspiration to start photographing the scene there and to look at movement differently?

“What I really fell in love with in the New York running community was the slightly subversive act of taking over the streets. Runners – pedestrians in general, really – kind of run this city, no pun intended. There are so many people walking and running here that they actually dictate the movement of the city. Watching run clubs, and especially some of the unsanctioned races, and witnessing these huge masses of people come together and then race straight through Manhattan – it was exciting, it was beautiful, it was an energy I had never seen before. That’s what really hooked me: seeing people’s passion for running, their passion for living in New York, and that whole expression of movement that feels like it could only happen here. It feels very specific to this city. I felt very comfortable documenting that kind of community because it has this element of chaos – a little bit wild, a little bit crazy. You have to be a little bit crazy to do it. Being out at 3 a.m. on Broadway on a bike, with traffic coming toward you, photographing runners… You really couldn’t do that anywhere else. This connected to so much of what I already loved about movement and sport. It was a natural fit. I didn’t plan to become part of it in any strategic way – there was a little bit of magic in it. One thing led to another, then the next thing, and suddenly I found myself in a space that felt right. That’s really how my career in New York has unfolded over the past four years. It’s been incredibly rewarding, because there is so much beautiful passion around running right now. It feels like the sky’s the limit in terms of how we can tell stories around this sport.”

You became a runner too?

“I started running when I moved here. I run in Central Park all the time, and it never feels the same twice. There’s something almost unexplainable about running in New York. It makes you feel like you’re part of a much larger movement. There’s this profound energy here – an unspoken web of people, this silent community that I really love. It’s an incredible city to run in. The funny thing is, I never thought I would become a runner. I honestly didn’t really like running growing up. In all the sports I played, it was used as a form of punishment – if you did something wrong, it was run laps. Now it’s become something completely different. It’s such a good space to detach for a while, to recenter. I really value it for that. I ran my first marathon last fall in Berlin. The weather was terrible, it was super hot, but I had an amazing time.”

New York also gave you the opportunity to create the book ‘Traces’. The word itself suggests residue, imprint, evidence – something that happens over and over again and leaves a mark. What kinds of traces were you most interested in, and what did you want to point toward in the book?

“‘Traces’ was a project I worked on last summer and fall for about four months. It focused on sub-elite marathon athletes in New York City – people I would define as living in that grey area between professional and non-professional. They have full-time jobs, but they train like professional athletes. I felt lucky that I could build an entire project around athletes who are that fast and that committed while also working full-time. What interested me most was their love of the sport, because that’s what it takes to live in that world. Some of them have families, some travel constantly for work, and yet they still find time to train at that level. That, to me, is incredible.

Coming from my own perspective, I’m always most interested in the journey, in the training, in the quiet moments. I didn’t really care about the actual marathons they were running, or about documenting race day in any direct way. I wanted to dig into the process. I wanted to go along on a training run and see what happens. It’s in that repetition – in doing the same thing again and again and again – that we build ourselves up to take on these larger challenges. Some people think of repetition as building a callus, as creating a harder surface that protects you from injury. I tend to think of repetition differently. I think of it as a kind of shedding. Not exactly wearing down, but removing layers. Through repetition, through the constant return to effort, we start stripping away things we’ve picked up over time that maybe no longer serve us. And what remains is something more authentic – something closer to who we actually are. Those are the “traces” I was interested in: the residue that gets shed.

You can see it in people’s expressions. You can see it in muscle fatigue. You can see it in those tiny shifts in form that happen as the body starts to reveal itself. But to capture that, you have to stay present through the boring middle section. You can’t just show up for the highlight. You have to stay with the repetition long enough to witness those small, fleeting moments. That’s what I was trying to capture in the whole project: that very brief space inside a workout where something opens up and becomes visible. That was the hope behind ‘Traces’.”

How does your approach shift when you move from long-term, intimate projects to large-scale sporting events—where access is limited and everything unfolds at speed?

“When I’m asked to shoot larger events, especially in contexts where access is restricted, the first thing I do is look at how those events are usually photographed. And then I make a very conscious decision to move in the opposite direction. For me, the perspective has to shift—otherwise, what’s the point?. From there, I try to understand the environment I’m stepping into: the city, the venue, the history of the event itself. I’m always searching for an angle that allows me to reframe what I’m seeing, even within a structure that might feel rigid or predetermined I’ll often begin with a mood board, a loose framework—something that gives me direction. I also know that once I’m inside the environment, everything can change. In fact, it probably will. Having a strong idea going in is important, but I have no problem abandoning it completely if something more interesting emerges in the moment. That way of working goes back to my background in jazz. You have a structure—a harmonic framework—but within that, there’s space to improvise. I think about photography in a similar way, especially in these high-pressure environments. Once I’m in it, it becomes about trusting the process. Trusting everything that has led me there. There’s a kind of creative autopilot that takes over—if that even exists. I’m reacting more than thinking, relying on instinct. The more I try to control it, the worse the work becomes. In those moments, I think of myself almost as another athlete. I’m trying to match their energy, to enter a similar space. The closer I can get to their experience—or at least to what I imagine their experience to be—the more truthful the image becomes. It’s important for me to feel some level of struggle myself. That tension, that effort—it adds something real to the image. In a way, I think of photography as a sport. Matching energy is essential.”

In these environments, do you feel sport can reveal something beyond the physical act—something deeper, even through photography?

“There’s always an objective in sport—winning, scoring, achieving something measurable. That’s part of it. But those outcomes don’t really tell us much about the person experiencing them. What interests me is how people hold themselves within that context. I’m less focused on what is being won and more on what is being revealed. The emotional and personal dimensions of the experience—those are the moments I’m drawn to. Often, it’s what happens just before or just after the defining moment. Right before something is achieved, or immediately after—when the celebration fades, or when the weight of a loss settles in. That’s where something more honest tends to emerge. Those moments say more about who we are. Not just as athletes, but as people. And they also reshape how we understand the sport itself—not in terms of rules or outcomes, but in terms of meaning. That’s where the depth is, for me.”

Looking ahead, are there still unexplored territories—within sport or beyond—that you feel drawn to?

“I’m definitely starting to move beyond running. What interests me is that this way of seeing—this focus on movement, on internal experience—can extend far beyond sport. It’s really about states of flow, about devotion, about how people engage with something they care deeply about. I’ve also done some work with dancers here in New York, and I’d love to explore that further. Movement for its own sake—without the framework of competition—is incredibly powerful. There’s a lot there.

I’m also hoping to spend more time in alpine environments this year. New landscapes, new conditions—just continuing to expand the space in which this work can exist. For me, it’s an ongoing process. I’m not trying to define it too rigidly. I follow what feels interesting, and I let the work evolve from there. Personal work will always be essential—those are the spaces where I can explore freely, without constraints. But what’s exciting right now is that even within commercial work, there’s a growing openness to more narrative-driven storytelling. In some ways, it feels like those two worlds are starting to overlap. And that allows me to approach commissioned projects with the same mindset I bring to my personal work.”