What do you see?

Hermann Rorschach was a Swiss psychiatrist who sought to discover a test to unlock and analyze a person’s subconscious that couldn’t be faked or manipulated like previous personality tests. Eventually he created the Rorschach test believing that you couldn’t trick your brain to see or not see something- it would just see- and those visions would share an accurate description of who you were.

He died young (before really seeing all of the success of his research) but before that realized that a person’s perspective was often times influenced by their surroundings, careers, etc. (Basically, that our experiences have a lot to do with our personalities and perspectives.)

I was fascinated with that and wanted to dive deep into that idea- the idea that two people could see the same image/inkblot, but their minds would see vastly different things.

While researching for this project, I was also seeing the images being released by the James Webb Telescope and was mesmerized both by the images, but also how different people could have drastically different experiences when viewing the “unknown.” Same images, but some were awed, others uneasy, some downright terrified.

All of that came together for this series, purposely titled a misspelling of Hermann Rorschach’s name, to show not just how incredibly subjective a person’s truth can be, but also how it can be based on inaccuracies that the person may not even realize.

So I ask again, what do you see?