Street Photography 2nd place winner

I photograph people from afar along our uneventful terrain and to escape this monotony I observe human actions. As a behavioral neuroscientist I seek to make my presence minimal. Whether with mice or humans, viewing from an ineffectual distance affords me safety in watching my subject’s natural state. I am disturbed that my primary connection to people is by scientific inquiry, which is perhaps schizoid in nature. My mobile camera serves as a data collection instrument, analytical tool, and social mediator. Ultimately my abstraction of other people’s behavior through the phone informs my composition, which brings to the foreground elements I unconsciously seek, that of an emotional response and feeling close to others. I collect, study, and curate my data with the goal of forming a narrative that I hope creates a cohesive story about the human species and our connectedness, albeit on through a plane of mediated networks. My photographs depict strong contrast, vivid colors, and darkened regions that extend across the paths where individuals navigate engrained routes.

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.