There are so many elements in this world. There are moments when it seems small. Occasions when, I think, a divine intervention has brought you to where you are. One might realize it immediately, or not until years later. Jung called it synchronicity. You may call it fate, divine intervention, serendipity, but I feel there is a reason behind everything that happens to you, to me, to us. There is a reason you run into your old middle school buddy you haven’t seen in a decade at a cafe in Brussels, or a person you haven’t thought of in years calls you within the hour, or find that old business card you used as a bookmark once, and decide to finally call the number. Those are times when you realize the few degrees of separation that link us all. That gives us the idea that the world is small, and I wish we had them more often.
The rest of the time, however, I am amazed by just how much life there is out there. From brine shrimp to blue whales, there are millions of different ways we see lives being lived. That fact is what drives me to do this: the hopeful epiphany that there is something about the photo of a person that you’ve never met who reminds you of you, or somebody you cherish.
We all have love to give, we all want love from others. We all long to be understood, and when we are, it is so validating. We all have some sense of justice, though some are not inspired to fight for what we believe in as much as others. We’re all hoping to find a complete and eternal love we think we don’t deserve in another being, and we are all scared that we won’t find it.
I am gratefully humbled to be a part of the process that might help one person discover what is great about another, or shine a light on a dark distant corner of the world. I think that seeing (not just looking) at as much of this world as we can—every complex aspect and nuanced interpretation—is what brings us closer to a place of harmony. The more a photographer can reveal about the world around him, the more successful he or she is. It makes our large world that much smaller, and in turn, brings us closer to each other, and the divine.