Open Theme nominee

This image was taken at the Charles MGH Redline T stop in Boston. I noticed a women directly across from me deeply focused on her device and right as the train was coming. I used the burst mode on my iPhone to ensure I would capture her between the train cars. I use this subway stop each day for work. Having a 10 month baby has limited my photography because I can no longer take off for several hours to go shoot. It's interesting to take images of the same places day in and out as I go back and forth from work to home. I appreciate the challenge of finding new things in familiar places.

Neuroscientists play an integral part in culture but the public knows little about how science is done, who does it or why it’s important. One consequence of opaque scientific work is the inability to see which individuals are conducting their research, their personal stories, and their motivations to help reveal the complexity of the nature we are imbued by.

These images were captured with a compact large format camera using experimental New55 PN instant film. The opaqueness of the positive (left) represents the raw data collected by scientists on their quest to understand nature. The inverted negative (right) represents how scientists reveal nature through filtering data, beautifying imagery, and at times removing unwanted, but captured information.

All scientists are part of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.