✅ The Art of Noticing
On Photography, Perception and the Care of Looking
“You can’t teach colour from Cézanne, you can only teach it from something like a bubble-gum wrapper.”
— Allan Kaprow
Noticing isn’t passive. It’s not the same as seeing, and it’s certainly not the same as consuming. Noticing is an act—a quiet, deliberate gesture of presence. It’s how we choose to let the world reveal itself: not in grand displays, but in the smallest, most ordinary moments.
To notice is to pause—to refuse the rush toward meaning, to allow something to exist without demanding explanation.
But noticing alone isn’t art.
Art begins when that attention is shaped—when you choose to frame what you’ve noticed and offer it back, not as a record, but as an invitation.
When Allan Kaprow said you can’t teach colour from Cézanne, but only from something like a bubble-gum wrapper, he wasn’t dismissing Cézanne—and he wasn’t suggesting that the bubble-gum wrapper is art. He was reminding us that if you want to learn how to see, you don’t start with art—you start with the world. Art is what happens after you’ve noticed. After you’ve paid attention to how light catches on a crumpled piece of foil, or how shadows align on a white wall, or how two trashcans lean toward each other on a sidewalk.
This is where my photography begins—not with a need to document, but with a commitment to witness. I’m not capturing an object or a moment for its own sake, but shaping a space where attention can rest. To notice what doesn’t demand to be seen, and offer it back as a frame of presence—where light, form, and tension gather into something felt. It’s not the thing I’m showing you—it’s the quiet shift that happens when something overlooked becomes held.
The work isn’t in finding something “beautiful.” It’s in knowing when perception itself asks to be shared—when a frame becomes a way to invite someone else to pause and see differently.
There’s also an ethics to this. To notice something is private. To frame it and offer it to others is a gesture of generosity—but also responsibility. I’m not asking viewers to admire what I’ve seen; I’m inviting them to slow down, to reflect on how they see, and perhaps, to notice their own world differently.
Notice this… and now go notice everything else.
Because once attention is activated—once you experience perception as a space rather than a function—the ordinary no longer feels so ordinary.
For me, The Art of Noticing isn’t just about what I see through the lens. It’s about creating architectures where perception, care, and presence converge. It’s about offering a pause—not to explain, but to accompany.
The work isn’t in what’s photographed.
It’s in the feeling that accompanies you,
long after you’ve looked away.