A study in eye contact.

This image sits with what we’ve grown unpractised at holding: sustained attention, unbroken presence, the quiet tension of being seen without distraction. In a culture trained to look away, toward screens, noise, and constant motion, this gaze asks something slower and more demanding.

Not intensity.
Not performance.
Just staying.

Eye contact was once neutral. Now it feels charged. Stillness feels intrusive. Presence carries weight. This work explores that shift, how distraction has reshaped our capacity to remain, and how depth begins to return when we resist the urge to move on.

There is nothing happening here except contact. And that is the point.

This piece accompanies the essay Why we look away: Eye contact, distraction, and the loss of depth, and forms part of the ongoing Held archive.

Look slowly.
Notice what urges you to look away.