"Aspicio" - Latin word meaning, "to gaze at/on".

The gaze is an aspect that comes hand in hand with portraiture. Within photography it has often been explored and sometimes used or manipulated. This work deals with the exchange of gazes and in particular the reflected gaze and the returned gaze. It examines the ways different people look at themselves and how they look back at and present themselves to the viewer. Throughout the series there is a great difference both between the reflected and returned gaze of each sitter but also between the way each sitter presents their self to the viewer. Some give a sense of awkwardness, a stiff expression, clasped hands, whilst for others it is their physique that dominates the photograph.

And as viewers, perhaps we should feel a sense of unease from being looked back at, having our gaze returned by the sitter? What happens when the viewer becomes the viewed?