The thermal camera takes away the familiar. The camera blurs the lines of gender, age, color, race. Hidden from view are the physical characteristics that socially divide us. Pigmentation, tattoos, hair color cease to exist. Marks and wrinkles on the skin disappear. The depth of field and three-dimensional object are flattened, and the figure comes to the forefront, often isolated in space, floating in nothingness, the absence of gravity. It’s disorienting. You don’t know where the surfaces are. You can’t connect the images to previous assumptions. You are forced to look and see differently. Instead, radiating from each portrait are the biological commonalities that unite us – breath, sweat, inflammation and the warm circulation of blood. The thermal camera reveals a whole other aspect of what a portrait might be, it captures a person’s essence. At a time when we are so divided in this country, in this age of polarity and punishment, the partisan politics and strangled language, my interest is in what connects us, the raw humanity within us. My hope is to inspire people to see that connectivity.