Digibrush N.V. Carlos Lippai

The Revealing Gaze: When Photography Touches the Soul

Introduction

In an age of instant images, where thousands of faces flash across our screens daily, one element still defines the difference between an ordinary photograph and one that moves us: the gaze. It's not just about a gesture, a pose, or the right light. It's about capturing what cannot be seen, but can be deeply felt.

The Gaze as an Active Force: Philosophical Roots

In ancient Greece, philosophers like Empedocles and Plato believed that vision was not merely receptive. For them, the eyes emitted an "inner fire"—an energy from the soul that reached out into the world. To see was not just to receive light, but to touch with the soul.

As photographers, we can deeply relate to this idea. Because when we capture that gaze—the one that seems to extend beyond the frame—we know that we’re not just photographing a face, but that the subject has also looked into us.

Transparency and Truth: The Gaze as a Window to the Self

Contemporary philosophers such as Emmanuel Levinas argue that the face of the other—especially the gaze—challenges us ethically. A truthful gaze cannot be ignored. It reveals the other, but also exposes something in ourselves.

In photography, this is what separates a “pretty” image from a living portrait: that split second when the person is no longer performing, no longer hiding—just being.

The Photographer’s Sensitivity: Capturing the Invisible

It’s not only about technique. It’s about perception, presence, and patience. Sometimes, the authentic gaze appears for a fleeting instant—right before or after the expected click. The sensitive photographer learns to wait, to see beyond the obvious.

There’s something bodily about it. As one photographer once said: “I don’t shoot with the camera—I shoot with my chest.” And it’s true. To capture an authentic gaze, the photographer must also be fully present, with body and soul.

Science and Connection: What Psychology Tells Us

Modern research shows that deep eye contact activates brain regions associated with empathy, emotional reading, and interpersonal connection. When we truly see—or are truly seen—a bond is formed that transcends the image. And if that bond is captured, the photograph breathes.

Conclusion

Capturing a true gaze is not just a technical achievement. It’s a moment of communion. It’s waiting for the soul of the subject to peek through, without forcing it. It’s a silent agreement between the one who sees and the one who allows themselves to be seen.

In a world flooded with images, the photographs that endure are the ones where a gaze touches us—because it was captured by someone who knew how to feel.

The image doesn’t end with the click—it begins with the question.

I’m a photographer based in St. Maarten, in the heart of the Caribbean light. I document life as it happens—its celebrations, its pauses, its quiet in-betweens. But behind every frame lies something deeper: a question, a thought, a way of seeing. This space is where I explore the soul of the image, beyond the lens and beneath the surface.

Still Frames, Moving Memories: On Photography and the Passage of Time

There is something profoundly moving about the way a photograph can awaken memory. At first glance, a photo seems simple — a fixed image, a fraction of a second captured forever. But what it unlocks is far from static. Like a key turning in a lock, an old photograph opens a door to a stream of memories: fragmented, shifting, and alive with emotion. What begins as an anchor to a specific moment becomes a kind of internal cinema, where scenes from the past replay themselves — colored by time, feeling, and personal interpretation.

Yet this film is not reliable. Memories are not frozen like the image we see. They are fluid, shaped by longing, by loss, by the invisible weight of everything that came before and after that single click of the shutter. We stare into the frame almost expecting movement, waiting for the scene to come alive again — for voices to return, for gestures to complete themselves — but the photograph remains silent. It is only 1/60th of a second, a sliver of something larger, a fragment that suggests rather than explains.

And still, the emotional impact can be profound. As Roland Barthes explores in Camera Lucida, the power of a photograph often lies in the punctum — that unexpected detail which pierces us, which wounds us. It is not universal. What moves one viewer may mean nothing to another. The punctum is intensely personal: a gesture, a shadow, a look in the eyes of someone long gone. It is the part of the image that escapes intention and strikes the viewer in a deeply subjective way.

In this sense, a photograph is not merely a document of the past. It becomes a vessel for the emotional and temporal weight we bring to it. It doesn't just show what was; it reveals how we remember, how we feel, and how we change. A photograph may be still, but within us, it stirs movement — not only of memory, but of meaning.

Reflections by Carlos Lippai · May 2025

Photography, Plato, and Susan Sontag

In her influential book On Photography, Susan Sontag suggests that we live in a new kind of cave—one not made of stone, but of images. Echoing Plato’s allegory, she compares photographs to the shadows cast on the cave wall: fragments of reality mistaken for the real thing.

Like the prisoners in Plato’s story who only see the world through flickering shadows, we often experience reality through photographs. They seem to show us everything, but they can also distract us from what lies beyond the frame. Photographs give the illusion of knowledge, when in fact they are interpretations—shaped by the photographer's choices of what to show, what to exclude, and how to frame the world.

Instead of deepening our experience, photography sometimes replaces it. We scroll, capture, and archive, often without really engaging. We feel we’ve “been there” just by seeing an image, though our understanding remains distant and partial.

Sontag doesn't reject photography; she invites us to wake up from its spell. Like Plato’s freed prisoner who steps out of the cave into the light, we too must learn to look beyond the surface. To see images critically is not to reject them, but to recognize both their power and their limits.

Photographs can reveal—but they can also conceal. The challenge is to stay aware of both.

Reflections by Carlos Lippai · May 2025

The Art of Sargassum: Nature’s Brushstrokes in Motion

Sargassum is a type of seaweed that, depending on the ocean currents, occasionally drifts onto the shores of the Caribbean. Here in St. Maarten, where I’ve lived for many years, it often washes up along the coast — sometimes in small patches, sometimes in overwhelming amounts. For most people, it’s just a nuisance. For me, it meant I had to put my regular ocean swims on hold.

But one day, as I watched the sargassum float and shift with the rhythm of the sea, something about its movement caught my eye. The way it danced gently with the waves, catching the last golden light of the day, felt strangely hypnotic — almost painterly.

That moment sparked an idea. I grabbed my camera, a tripod, and began experimenting. Using slow shutter speeds and different lenses, I tried to capture that motion, that feeling — not just the scene, but the emotion behind it. Over several weeks, returning to the shoreline became something like an act of meditation. I spent hours chasing light and movement, refining my technique, and allowing the process to unfold with patience and presence.

The results surprised me. The images became abstract, fluid, and expressive — reminiscent of Jackson Pollock’s action painting, but shaped by natural elements: seaweed, water, and the warm colors of the Caribbean sunset.

What began as a disruption turned into a creative opportunity. These photographs are a way of seeing the sargassum differently — not as an inconvenience, but as part of the ever-changing art of nature.

All of the photos in this series were taken here, in St. Maarten — my home, and the place where I continue to find unexpected beauty through the lens.

By Carlos Lippai September 2014

Beyond Technique

How one photograph reminded me why I stopped teaching and started listening.

My passion for photography initially led me to teach the process of developing and enlarging negatives at a local photo club. Although I enjoyed sharing knowledge, over time the experience started to feel repetitive. That’s when I decided to shift directions: instead of continuing as a "teacher," I became a "facilitator" of a workshop designed to reflect on and talk about photography in a way that was focused more on emotion than technique.

Each session centered around the work of a well-known photographer: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange, André Kertész, Josef Koudelka… The list is long. We passed around a book by the featured artist, discussed our impressions, and then one of the participants shared their own work.

I still vividly remember one particular session. A participant showed a series of technically flawless images—good composition, color, framing… everything was correct. But there was one black-and-white photograph that truly stood out. It showed an empty chair with a nearly transparent white shirt hanging over the backrest, illuminated by the light pouring through a window. The curtains, also white, were visibly moving—stirred gently by the wind coming in.

When we asked what had motivated that image, his answer was brief but full of emotion:
“I took it after a very painful breakup.”

Everyone agreed—this photo had a special kind of power. There was something deeper than technique: an intimate truth, a sincere emotion. We told him we would love to see more of his work taken from that vulnerable, sensitive place—images that came from feeling, not just from skill.

From that day forward, something shifted. For him, it sparked a new kind of artistic search. And for me, too. As a facilitator, I felt that leaving the darkroom behind had been worth it. I was no longer just teaching photography—I was helping others connect more honestly with their own way of seeing and expressing the world.

Alongside that personal satisfaction came another, unexpected one: enrollment for the month-long, twice-a-week course filled up quickly—and kept filling up with each new cycle. This, despite the fact that some of the photo club’s board members had predicted the format wouldn’t last. After all, this was the first time the institution had offered a course focused not on technique, but on artistic and emotional exploration.

The club had traditionally aligned itself with technical training, including competitions where a panel—usually three judges—would approve or reject photos based on composition or technical execution. Emotion was rarely discussed, perhaps because it’s harder to evaluate. Yet, as that workshop showed me, it’s often the emotional truth of an image that stays with us the longest.

Although I haven’t run those workshops in many years now, that moment has stayed with me—one of those memories that refuses to fade.
What’s most interesting is that, out of all the images I saw during those years—including many that won first prizes in judged competitions—it’s that single black-and-white photo of the shirt that remains in my mind. Not for its technical merit, but for the quiet, emotional truth it carried.

By Carlos Lippai April 2010

Differences in Photographic Approach: Cartier-Bresson and Alex Webb

When the silence of form meets the chaos of color

Henri Cartier-Bresson and Alex Webb are towering figures in street photography, yet their ways of seeing — and feeling — the world through a lens could not be more different. Both rely on intuition and a sharp attention to the moment, but what they do with that moment is radically distinct.

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Precision of the Decisive Moment

Cartier-Bresson believed photography was about capturing the exact moment when all the elements of a scene — shape, light, gesture — aligned perfectly. He called this the decisive moment. For him, the camera was an extension of the eye and body, not the mind. His work, almost always in black and white, is clean, precise, quiet. Composition and geometry were as important as emotion.

“To photograph is to align the head, the eye, and the heart along the same axis.”

His images are visual meditations: resolved, self-contained, complete.

Alex Webb: Chaos as a Visual Language

Alex Webb, on the other hand, embraces complexity. His images are layered, vibrant with color, filled with deep shadows and intense light. Unlike Cartier-Bresson, Webb doesn’t seek order, but narrative density. There’s rarely a single focal point; multiple moments unfold simultaneously. The eye wanders, questions, explores.

Webb is a master of color. It’s not decorative — it creates tension, context, emotion. His scenes, often shot in Latin America, radiate a visual heat that is almost tangible.

“Color is chaos. Black and white is a reduction. My world is not black and white.”

Two Ways of Seeing, Two Inner Worlds

Cartier-Bresson seeks essence; Webb, complexity. One freezes harmony; the other lets disorder breathe. One reduces; the other expands.

Both shoot from intuition — yet while Cartier-Bresson clicks when everything aligns, Webb clicks when everything is on the verge of spilling over.

Personal Reflection

Observing these two very different ways of approaching photography makes me think about how each gaze is deeply connected to a way of being in the world. Cartier-Bresson speaks to me of the harmony that arises when we’re fully present — when everything aligns and nothing is missing. Webb, in contrast, reminds me that beauty also lives in chaos, in the unfinished, in the overlapping stories that don’t need to resolve.

In my own journey with the camera — or even without it — sometimes I long for the crisp clarity of Cartier-Bresson. Other times, I surrender to the rich confusion of Webb. Perhaps intuition isn’t only in the moment we shoot, but in knowing from which part of ourselves we’re looking.

And maybe, like them, it’s not about choosing between order or chaos — but about learning to listen to the moment that calls us.

By Carlos Lippai May 2025