Eye Work

2016

What makes someone’s eyes expressive?

Is it a natural gift? A practiced skill? Or something deeper—something you can’t quite name, but feel when it’s there?

I began asking these questions in the early years of my photography, when I was still circling around the edges of street work—drawn to people but hesitant to cross the threshold of the candid moment. Back then, I would occasionally stop strangers and ask to make their portrait.

Eventually, I began to wonder: what if I brought that same instinct into a more controlled space? What if, instead of waiting for something to emerge by chance, I collaborated with someone who already knew how to speak with their eyes?

That’s when I met Alina Lee.

Eye Work is a portrait series born from that collaboration—a quiet study of emotional nuance, subtle gesture, and the power of being seen. Alina had the kind of magnetism that draws attention without asking for it. That visibility shaped how we entered the work together, and it made me reflect on what I was drawn to in those early years—what I noticed first, and why. But what held me—what made the images endure—was her ability to express with clarity and restraint. With her eyes alone, she could shift the emotional register of a frame—sometimes soft, sometimes distant, sometimes unreadable in a way that made you want to stay with it longer.

Working with her helped me reconsider the nature of attention: who receives it, who’s conditioned to return it, and what we learn to see as meaningful in a face.

Looking back, I see how this work helped prepare me for Convergence: not in style, but in sensitivity.

Before I could chase layered chaos in the streets, I had to learn how to hold still—and really see a person.