Notes from the darkroom.
#8: on projection
Most people won’t see the detail in a photograph that makes it work.
The same way only a thin slice of a theatre audience notices the small choices that hold a scene together.
I accepted that, eventually.
What I didn’t expect was the opposite: people seeing things in my images that I did not.
They find their own entry point…
A detail that pulls them in.
A connection they make.
A memory they live again.
It put me off at first. Not their interpretation, but the distance between what I wanted them to see and what they actually saw —the gap between intention and reception.
Over time that gap started to matter less. I even began to appreciate it. It felt like seeing that moment again. Not through my memory but theirs. A double exposure I didn’t control.
People don’t look at an image. They look into it.
They search for themselves. Art reaches only when it returns something the viewer already carries.
So I stopped insisting on showing.
My work no longer was a statement but a space where their story can take shape.
My story is still there but it’s no longer the only one.
And that expansion feels like the real reward.
Not agreement.
Not validation.
Recognition; across perspectives.
Every photograph becomes a mirrored image; rarely reflecting what I project but revealing what someone else brings to it.
And I love the uncertainty of that; when I have no idea what they’ll find.
And I’m ready to be surprised again.
Further thinking?
