Listening with Your Eyes

In a flash, in one instantaneous moment, who we are can be captured and conveyed. Our vital essence, our humanity, is right there for all to see but rarely do we see it. We're so busy looking at other things. Our senses are overloaded. It's impossible to process it all.

But a photograph still has the power to jar us into paying attention. A photograph can stop time. A still image can do what no other other medium can - it can force us to see, to pay attention. A photograph can move us to feel.

Every person has a story. And every person has a struggle. When we relate to those things we find common ground. We feel each other. We feel ourselves in each other. My goal is nothing less than this. I want you, the viewer of the photograph, to feel what I feel, what I felt in the moment the photo was taken and still feel long after the shutter is closed.

I am your proxy. Your emissary. And it's my goal to bring you the good news of the world, to show you people, glorious, glowing, living, beautiful people. Not that you can't do this yourself. Not that you need me. But if I can grab your attention for a second, and get you to look at someone, and feel something, for a second, then I have helped to advance the cause of us. I have taken a person from one part of the world and projected them onto another, defeating both space and time, to bring one orbiting particle into the trajectory of another.

So whether it's Larry the Pigeon Guy in Washington Square Park (above) or a CEO from some Silicon Valley start-up I am, I believe, doing my part to introduce people who would not have ever been seen. At least not the way I see them.

So yes, I do street photography but I also do corporate portraits and I don't see them as all that different. The intent is the same. My intent. To see into people's hearts and capture that. The secret to doing that is listening.