The face at home is an exploration through photography, specifically portrait and candid photography of how humans interpret people's emotions through faces. Through photography, emotions that cannot be expressed through words are captured and conveyed. Portrait photography is able to encapsulate people's state at a moment in time and get a glimpse into who they are at their core, in an emotional sense. The photographer is able to snap a picture that captures the subject's emotions and feelings, which has the power to tell their story, in that very second, to a stranger. A photograph captured the next minute can tell a completely different story about the very same subject because feelings are ephemeral, ever-changing at every point in time.
As Platon puts it, ”when I press the shutter, something amazing happens, it's 500th of a second, but it freezes an event. You're looking for a moment when you feel you're as close to the soul as possible.”
Emotions make humans who they are. A human's facial movements can show their emotional state. Every human is
different and every face is different. Even though humans express how they feel through similar emotions, they can express these emotions in different ways.
To portray this, I have created a publication consisting of photographs that have been captured of strangers without their knowledge. This allowed their genuine and true facial expressions to be recorded. Their relaxed and authentic demeanour can be attributed to their unawareness of the project's focus. Before the whole image is presented, only a cut out of their faces is shown. This allows people to focus on their faces, and only their facial expressions with no surroundings, story, or anything else showing. Everyone interprets their faces differently and begins to craft a story.
Valerie Kaur says that ”Deep listing is an act of surrender. We risk being changed by what we hear.” I feel this is true for photography, when one sees a photograph they must leave their preconceptions and try to understand the emotions being conveyed.
