There was a time when I took photos a lot. It was in high school, around when I did People of Boston based off Humans of New York. I took photos mostly of people. It was not data collection or machine work. There were no output stats, no KPIs. The goal was to reveal humanity. To portray though a camera lens a slice of personality, wit, humor. With a little buttering up, a simple question about a dream or challenge, I was surprised how quickly people would open up, manifesting wisdom earned by experience.
Teddy Roosevelt once said that we don’t stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing. I always loved that quote. I think it has something to do with our spark — our burning curiosity, childlike playfulness, thorough enjoyment of the moment. Many of us lose sight of that spark as we grow older. It becomes buried under heaps of social norms and molds and expectations of being a serious adult. But we don’t lose it altogether. No, it just becomes buried, buried deeply.
I conceived of my job—as photographer—to reveal those buried sparks. To remind a person, yes, this is who I am. To show a person who they’ve missed, the original version. It was an audacious goal, I know, and probably one much better accomplished by family and friends than a photographer. But I wanted to see if I could do it, and not—to paraphrase Thoreau—when I came to have less time, discover that I had not tried.
I’ll never forget one woman in particular that I interviewed by Harvard Square in Boston. She was tall, with a head full of curly hair, and since she was a therapist, I asked for the most common advice that she offered to clients. “Be curious about your experience,” she said. “Your inner experience. Acknowledge it. Recognize it. Be curious about it. Most importantly, don’t ignore it.”
We all have stories. Some we know and others we don’t. Some we share and others we hide. Some we are proud of. Others we are ashamed about. Some we try to run from. Others we try to run towards. Some that are not yet stories but dots waiting to be connected.
But—and this is something I learning interviewing clients and witnesses as a public defense investigator—we all want to be heard. To have someone else hold onto our information. To know us a little better, to witness our transient passing on Planet Earth.
In my high school years, I found that portrait photographs were the best medium to unbury sparks and capture stories—rather than words—because they showed a person’s face, that unparalleled reflection of the heart and soul. To physically capture a person’s emotional and intellectual home was astonishing. It was mysterious and magical and real all at once. And to provide the subject with such a portrait, of themselves, was such a gift. It was a way of saying, I see you.
My dream at the time was to create art of such portraits. To create a magazine filled with photos rich in subtlety captioned with words rich in detail. If people really saw one another, I thought it would solve a lot of problems. I guess I still believe that, but things are more complicated now.