CSE Photos
CSE Photos

See what others miss.

A collection of street photographs showing people completely absorbed in waiting, reading, creating, and thinking.

Observation

Attention

Not everyone looking is paying attention. Some people wait. Some people search. Some people read. Some people disappear into their work. These moments have little to do with the cities they were photographed in and everything to do with the quiet worlds people carry with them. Attention is becoming one of the rarest things we have. Perhaps that’s why it has become one of my favorite subjects to photograph.

Cities are often described as loud places.

Crowded.
Fast.
Distracting.

Yet every once in a while, someone creates a small island of silence.

A man waits patiently for a light to change.

Another studies a screen as though the rest of the café has disappeared.

A woman sits beneath a tree, turning pages while the world continues around her.

Even a sculpture, frozen in bronze, can somehow look like it’s searching for an answer.

Street photography is usually associated with movement.

I’m increasingly interested in the opposite.

The moments where people become completely absorbed.

Those are the moments that ask us to slow down as well.

Maybe attention isn’t something we give.

Maybe it’s something we learn to notice.

The sequence

Moments

A man sits alone in a café, focused on a tablet while wearing wireless earbuds.

The Work Between

Some of the most important work doesn’t happen in offices. It happens in the spaces between destinations.

A man in a beanie stands at a Paris street corner looking at his phone while waiting to cross, photographed in black and white.

Waiting for Green

Even waiting has changed. We rarely stand still without looking somewhere else.

A woman sits alone on the grass beneath trees reading a book on a quiet afternoon.

Another Chapter

Some people travel to see more of the world. Others open a book and let the world come to them.