The Miscellany News

I often find myself existing as an observer. The instant I capture an image, colors grow fuller, dullness disappears, and shadows and fleeting gestures take on deeper significance. As I adjust exposures and increase contrasts, a wave of euphoria washes over me. The satisfaction of completing the image floods my body. I discover meaning in where my gaze lands, in the darting eyes that pause on ordinary things and in cultivating memories from still moments. I perceive these moments quietly, heeding how people and objects inhabit the world without interruption and letting conversations manifest through unfiltered expressions and presence. 

A boy’s palm folds between his father’s palm, calloused hands softly soothing. The eyes of strangers glint courteously on the train. The smell of cigarettes clings to the clothes of a Romanian father whose forehead is creased and eyes sullen. Silhouettes linger on porcelain airport floors. Sweat drips down the face of a frail Phoenician man holding a faded cardboard sign, his lips parched and chapped from lack of water. A cumulus cloud hangs in harmony above a bonsai tree like the Creation of Adam, two hands almost touching. A wooden Arcadia door channel beams with light, a portal to a mystic world. My baby sister jumps into a giant puddle, rain droplets stretching with elasticity and pulling her fully into the present. A German woman with blue doe eyes framed by wired glasses reads quietly on a rustic bench in Berlin’s Tiergarten, a hunting ground where nobles once stood. Each observation becomes a fragment, a time capsule bearing traces of myself through what I witness and capture. 

At the same time, I wrestled with this part of myself, wondering if my focus was misguided. I tried to flatten this way of living to appear more visible, more integrated, to mute my way of seeing and brighten only after hours. In environments where external achievement took precedence over internal experience, I attempted to suppress and obscure the meaning I found in small observations. It is difficult to express the emptiness that could arise in such a solitary pursuit, to recognize one’s source of grounding as an invisible cloak worn willingly. It felt selfish to hope to be observed in a similar light. Amid the weight of a simple flick of the wrist or a tap of a hand, when watched with eyes and not ears, I carried a silent wonder: might attention of that kind ever mirror itself onto me?

The wave of hopelessness and dismissal followed me like uninvited critics. I recall moments late at night, sitting alone on a bench and feeling as if I were standing at the crest of a wave, waiting for it to break and crash unrestrained, to be witnessed and felt. Seeing became a compulsion I felt I had to fight. Reaching for my camera and walking around by myself, I began to perceive my observations as aimless. Subtle movements I observed whispered pragmatically that such meaning was impractical, meant only to be witnessed passively. 

These taunting swells lingered as I made my way to Vogelstein Theater on the evening of Nov. 13 to attend the screening of RaMell Ross’ documentary, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.” By then, I was well acquainted with the theater. Inside its emerald green walls and intimate environment, I was reminded of driving through the Rocky Mountains where shifting images of evergreens, seen from a car window, blurred into a solid shade. Once introductions concluded, the lights dimmed, and the film began. I was transfixed. 

Immediately, I noticed the director’s choice of shots, interpreting each one as an extension of his inner world, and recognized his way of observing as aligned with my own. Woven in every frame, I saw feeling before meaning: high school basketball players’ silhouettes cast onto concrete walls, minute gestures that became self-portraits, music restoring presence from reflective filters, people treated not as spectacles or characters but as individuals worthy of being known in everything hidden or overlooked. The act of perceiving someone through a perspective novel to them restored salience. The camera oscillated between sharp and soft focus, creating emotional resonance from uncurated moments. Life’s poetic fragments revealed the truest parts of humanity, a story serendipitously understood.

A small jet plane drifted across the sky as a young girl cried in angst. Smoke pierced the sunlight. A bee circled the bed of a pickup truck. A hand draped across the tailgate contained a wordless verse. Struck with a profound frisson, my body leaned forward subconsciously. Goosebumps spread. My throat caught with a cry as images of a woman singing in a chapel appeared. Tears welled from her closed eyes. Between every squint and crescendo of her voice, I held her struggles, hopes and exhaustion voyeuristically, watching as they overflowed in a devotional plea. 

As the film came to a halt and the screen turned to black, the soft crackle of Billie Holiday’s “Stars Fell on Alabama” echoed. Usually, I would let myself exit events of that kind quietly, but as the theater emptied, regret festered. I took a deep breath, attempting to temper the tidal feeling the film left in me, and approached RaMell Ross just before he left. Through a slew of “uh’s” and “umm’s,” I introduced myself and told him how much the documentary impacted me. I sensed his composure become more animated, his attention fully directed despite being pressed for time. I began to ask him a series of questions, becoming unintentionally reflexive, and noticed that his words connected with me on a level I had never experienced. 

I asked if, when he captured shots of shadows and fragments, there was meaning already attached, or if it was feeling first. He responded that feeling always came first, and meaning emerged once dismissed details could be studied closely. I asked if this desire to uncover meaning in the insignificant was how he understood himself. His eyes widened with a smile. “Absolutely,” he said. I then asked him if that way of seeing ever shuts off for him, and he answered with a discerning no. 

I told him it might sound intense for a brief encounter with a stranger, but it was the first time I felt my relationship to the world being reflected back at me by another successful person. Having engaged with photography and close observation as a solitary witness, I struggle to maintain that perspective. The on-and-off switch flickers in moments where I become skeptical of its value. I do not claim to be unique or assert my approach as noteworthy; I had simply yet to find those who share it. He told me that for a while, he felt the same way. Over time, however, he has been able to meet people who reflect his inner world back to him. 

Before he left for dinner, I asked a final question: Did he ever feel discouraged? He told me not in the ordinary sense. In unison, we said, “It’s just the way you are.” Both of us smiled before shaking hands and exchanging parting words. He assured me to keep creating and to continue photographing, because it is oxygen to your lungs, not an attention-seeking disposition. There was no mold to fit, no conventional path to follow, no environment or hardship that could extinguish something so innate, felt with eyes open or closed, in sound or in silence. In that moment, I felt seen in a way that required no acknowledgment, a connection unspoken, unmade for me, yet found when I needed it most. 

On the walk back to my dorm, I put my headphones on and sat down on one of the benches near Noyes. I wore the same denim jacket I always gravitate towards when the air is brisk but not frigid, staring at the same moonlit sky that has accompanied me many nights before, but this time, I felt different. Meddling thoughts washed onto shore, and I realized the wave did not crash to be witnessed; rather, it was intrinsic. This past summer, in a conversation with Sallie Crotty, a published memoirist and poetry writer, she asked, “Who sees you?” I told her that through observing the world and writing for others, I see and find clarity within myself, a contentment that cannot be fractured.