Through photography, I aim to portray something under the surface of an image or of a scene itself, instead illustrating the intangible. Quick, snapshot style photographs can provide an opportunity to notice the everyday thoughts and events that happen around you, revealing details of a place, time, or person that you may have otherwise overlooked. In taking snapshots of my peers in class throughout the semester, I noticed quite quickly a common theme while capturing people – the habit of resting one’s hand upon your face or chin in moments of work or lecture. 

 

Interestingly, by a glance of one of these photos, it is difficult to distinguish a person’s resting on the hand from being a sign of listening and deliberation on the topic being discussed or instead as the opposite -- merely a reaction from pure exhaustion or boredom that led to a sort of mental absence. In this way, photographing the everyday habits that students and people, in general, hold can reveal a depth of understanding beneath the surface. Furthermore, before being photographed, these small, perhaps meaningless habits may have likely been entirely unrealized to that individual. Meaningful or not, such studies of commonplace situations have the power to bridge beautifully insightful photography with our routine life to discover something new.