Look closer
Three things your brain does while you look.
Ever seen a face in a cloud, or in the front of a car? That’s pareidolia: your brain completing a familiar shape from a few scraps. It runs fast, before you decide to look. Missing a face cost our ancestors more than imagining one, so the brain leans toward finding someone there. These pictures give that habit something to find.
A leaf seen up close has no horizon and no clear size. Its veins branch the way rivers and trees do, a pattern nature repeats at every scale. With nothing to tell your eyes how big it is, your brain reads it as terrain. Add one small animal, and the terrain becomes a world.
Hearing works the same way. In the hum of a singing bowl or a long drone, people often hear voices, birds or footsteps. The brain groups overtones into something that sounds like someone. Finding an animal in a picture and hearing a voice in a sound are the same skill: noticing what is already there.
Printed to order on archival pigment paper and shipped directly to you. Open edition, unframed. Four sizes, $20 to $65.
Printed to order on archival pigment paper. Open edition, supplied unframed with a white border for framing.
Printed in Bend, Oregon and shipped directly to you, 5-8 business days. Shipping $8, free on orders over $70.
