The title is misleading. It’s more a retrospective.

Every image except one was shot in 2019. Good lord, it was a damn fine year. I’m lucky to observe people. Bearing witness is powerful stuff. I’m constantly amazed by it.

Lately, I’ve been building portraits around eyes. I really dial the eyes in first. They’re my secret subject. Always.

I pay close attention to irises and pupils. I finesse catch light. Only then do I compose a shot. Eyes first, then everything else follows: Hair, nose, mouth, and hoodie. Toque, tie, vest, or jewelry.

Whatever it may be. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It’s secondary.

“Eyes so transparent that through them the soul is seen.” —Theophile Gautier

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
—Mark Twain

“Now I wash the gum from your eyes, / You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.”
—Walt Whitman

“You have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.”
—Carl Sandburg

“Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche

“Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.”
—Benjamin Franklin

“The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.”
—Jawaharlai Nehru

“Keep your eyes open to your mercies.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson

“A gentleman has eyes on all those present….”
—Lawrence G. Lovasik

“The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.”
—Heraclitus

“Our eyes of flesh only see night.”
—Victor Hugo

“A man’s feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.”
—George Santayana

“The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.”
—St. Jerome

“Of my face, I like the eyebrows and eyes.”
—Frida Kahlo

“For I dipped into the future, far as the human eye could see, / Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.”
—Alfred Lord Tennyson

“The eye is the jewel of the body.”
—Henry David Thoreau

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