Visual Animals

It’s amazing to me, that we come in so many shapes and sizes. Our colors vary. But really we’re like leaves on the same tree. To see only the differences is not to see. Sometimes I think it might be better if we were all of us blind because then all we’d have to go on is our voices. We’d have to feel our way through life instead of see our way through it. But we’re visual animals. To discern shapes and colors is how we evolved. It’s how we survived. But now it’s how we might kill ourselves off.

I can’t make anyone see what I see. Even if I literally show it to you. Even if I take a photograph of someone, and they show up to me as perfect and beautiful, you’ll still see your own version, and make your own judgements. You will put the person into some kind of a box. Male. Female. Old. Young. And there they will stay. So a photograph is just a box. These judgements are so ingrained. Even I succumb to them and I have done thousands of portraits. But I am learning. I am coming to see deeper than skin. Instead of reaching out with my eyes I am reaching out with my heart.

If you stare at a portrait long enough you will see a person travel through time. You will see them as a child, and you will see them as geriatric. If you look long enough. At least that’s how it is for me. I have a wild imagination and I can see it all, an entire lifetime in one image. And that’s what I aim to do. Capture the full gamut of a person in one moment. I know that’s a lot to take in.

So while I marvel at our variations I also marvel at our commonalities. Each person wears such a fabulous suit of clothes - bones, hair, skin. Walking out the door each day is like going to Italy. It’s a fashion show on the street. To me this is the best thing about being alive. I get to see all these different looking people while all the while knowing that we’re all essentially the same. Essentially.