about
Sandun de Silva is a Sri Lankan-born photographer and visual artist based between Helsinki and Colombo. He is the founder of Studio SDS. For more than twenty years his work has moved between resort and hospitality photography, architecture, interiors, fashion, and documentary work — commissioned and personal projects across Asia and Europe. His style comes less from a formula than from patience, and a quiet way of looking.
Resorts and hotels have been the core of that practice. Each project is about capturing more than a property — it's about capturing the feeling of a place: its architecture, its landscape, the quiet rhythm of a space at rest.
That same instinct carries through everything else he shoots. Each project is an attempt to bring someone else's vision to life — an architect's intention for a house, a hotel's sense of place, a designer's story told through fabric and light. Shadow is used as a tool, not an afterthought. Color is kept for the one thing in a frame that deserves it. A certain stillness runs through even his most dramatic work. Several of his architectural series exist as much as preservation as documentation — a record of places as they were.
Food has become a defining part of that practice. He trained as a Cordon Bleu chef at the Tante Marie School of Culinary Arts, and it shows — his eye for a dish comes from having cooked it, not only photographed it.
The same pursuit of restraint carries into Ceylon Archive — a print studio built from twenty years of work across Sri Lanka. Quiet, timeless images, made to live on a wall. Shop the collection, or follow along at @ceylonarchive.art.
His portrait and event work has been just as varied. He photographed an official portrait of Prince Charles during a state visit to Sri Lanka. He spent nine years as official photographer for CFW, followed by five years shooting its campaigns. He has covered the Colombo Jazz Festival, and worked for a period with Hennessy Artistry.
His photographs have appeared in Vogue India, Condé Nast Traveller, Elle Decor, GQ, Rolling Stone India, the Financial Times, The Hindu, Robb Report, Forbes Ukraine, and Vogue Italia.
And the story continues.
