David DeSandro

Photo by Justin Higuchi. Made for Electric Objects. 2015.

Photo by Nelson Davis, AIP Corporation. Made for Electric Objects. Licensed CC-BY-SA. 2015.

These portraits are an ongoing project I've been working on for years. It’s inspired by (or a derivative of) Chuck Close.

I’m fascinated by how you can simplify an image and still make sense of it. Faces work best as our brains have special programming for facial recognition. Taking an image of someone, you can reduce it to a handful of shapes and colors and still recognize the person.

When you look up close, it’s a bunch of meaningless circles and squares. When you step back and view it all, you can’t help but see the person. Not just see them, but also notice details and imperfections. All from simplistic pieces. What’s really there?

The universe is like this at both ends of its scale. The space inside an atom is mostly nothing. The space in between stars is mostly nothing. But when you view these elementary pieces together, you see something interesting.

Photo by Charles Kerr. Made with Breathing halftone. 2014.

Photo by luke chan. Made with Breathing halftone. Licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. 2014.