This series investigates the humanness that can be found in mechanical objects. Using fresh eyes, I can find fresh eyes winking back at me from surprising places. This series also investigates the mechanical nature of human perception. Pareidolia is the scientific term for the brain’s process of finding significance in vague or random stimulus—finding animals in clouds is a common example. Carl Sagan hypothesized that human beings are “hard-wired” via early evolution to identify the human face as a survival technique.

I am interested in how photography can make the invisible visible—in this case the part of our brain that unconsciously strains to find a face and, by the same token, the matching part of the industrial designers’ brain that pushed them to unconsciously design an object with a face in it. I find in these objects a reflection of the people that anonymously build the cities around us; that anonymously roam the cities around us.

Over time, repeating this process of instant recognition of a face strengthens a kind of perceptive muscle that allows viewers to see these images everywhere, to tune into the process in their brains that was always there.

I’ve enjoyed hearing from many viewers how they see faces everywhere after seeing these images and how fun the journey of finding them can be.