His eyes

HyM, 2020

Continuing with the same topic as the last article, where I did a reflective analysis of the nostalgia feeling, in this case I will also focus it around the influence of emotions in the media.

This afternoon, while I was continuing with the research process for my store design project, I found this publicity picture on H&Ms website. The real objective of this image was to sell this beautiful Christmas hat for kids, which obviously was not what I was searching for.

Even if it wasn’t, I couldn’t stop myself of opening it, there was something I was wondered by, and I didn’t know what it was. 

Then I realized that there were his eyes, which look at you with so much intensity that you can’t stop looking at them, even if buying the hat it’s not your main objective.

His eyes look at you as they looked to the photographer when he took the picture, you know that they were looking at each other creating a completely new story into your mind.

But now it is you who is in the photographer’s place, his eyes are interacting with you as if they wanted to tell you something.

In some cases a direct gaze is related with an intimidating feeling, with the objective of making the viewer uncomfortable, finally having to move his gaze to another place, interrupting this uncomfortable direct eyes connection.

But in this case this is not happening, you just want to discover what is he thinking, what was happening in the set while he was looking to the photographer, why is he smiling? Did the photographer do something to make him smile? Maybe another person? Something that he said? Or was it just an acting?

Probably we’ll never know, but it’s really interesting to see how simple a connection can be created between an image and the viewer, how you create a story in your mind just seeing an image once, and how you stopped in an add which had anything in common with your initial search, just for a direct gaze.

How curious is photography.