Tony Van Le Photography
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Microcosm

2011-2022

Microcosm is where my photography began. Before the city, before the portraits, before the layers—I started here, with stillness and attention.
These photographs were made during a time when I was just beginning to understand how looking deeply could become a way of seeing spiritually. I wasn’t seeking beauty for its own sake—I was trying to understand what makes something alive.

From insects and textures to fractured flowers and strange organic forms, each frame became a fragment of a larger language—one that speaks not just in pattern or color, but in resilience, distortion, and quiet transformation.

This was the beginning of my gaze. A study in presence. A record of awakening.

Years later, when I began photographing human complexity in the streets, the impulse was the same: to notice what others overlook, and to hold it long enough for it to reveal something sacred.   

Footnotes for the Curious

  • We are all made up of stardust–an outgrowth of Earth itself.
  • The Fibonacci Sequence appears in petals, pinecones, and galaxies.
  • 61% of our genes are shared with a fruit fly.
  • And 99.9% of our genetic code is the same across all humans.
All images © Tony Van Le