Lake Community

 This series illustrates the psychological phenomenon known as Pareidolia. 

Pareidolia involves perceiving vague and often random stimuli as being significant.  This occurs because the brain compulsively fills in the gaps where information is incomplete, ambiguous, or absent.  Recent scientific findings have identified a part of the brain called the fusiform face area, which is responsible for the recognition of human faces.   This area is activated both when one encounters a face, and also when one remembers a face.  When we are presented with stimuli involving random patterns, such as reflections on water, often this area of the brain is inadvertently activated. Pareidolia is why we find the face of Jesus in a slice of toast, and the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich. It is how a child sees animals in the clouds, and it is how I have found a whole community living in the water.

These unique images were captured digitally and printed to archival etching paper.  The backgrounds have been physically removed, along with the surface of the paper, in order to make the figures more recognizable and accessible to the viewer. This creation of context allows the images to read as candid photographs of individuals that have emerged out of my own biased perception.  The prints have been coated with a UV-protective spray for enhanced ultraviolet durability, chemical, water and abrasion resistance.  In other words, they should last much longer than a grilled cheese sandwich.