Encounters

I remember each day through emotion. As I look back on those memories, I find myself thinking about what I felt, where I was standing, what the people around me were looking at, and how we shared that place. These questions expanded my gaze beyond my own emotions to the people around me and the places we shared. Looking again at a familiar day, experiencing a place for the first time, and noticing strangers who share the same time and space are all forms of encounter. By recording myself, others, and the places we inhabit together, I begin to see the day I am living now in a new way. In places such as parks, squares, and stations, where many people happen to cross paths, people gather for different reasons. They walk, wait, linger, and eventually disperse in their own directions. The movements of otherwise unrelated people overlap by chance and, together with the place itself, briefly form a single scene. People with no prior connection become temporarily linked within the same frame, almost as a single “we.” I record these moments that emerge by chance between myself, others, and the places we occupy together. I search for these points of contact while imagining where people might gather and what kinds of scenes might unfold. Yet the scenes I actually encounter always exist somewhere between expectation and chance. I encounter connections that briefly emerge and disappear within that space between the two.