“Paying attention directly to objects and people in our world comprises maybe half our waking consciousness; the remainder of the day and night we spend in dreams, visions, and essentially comatose states of being.”

From the Notebooks of C.R. Howerton

The right hand of our foreground subject (the round-faced lady with curly hair) intrigues me most in this image. The bejeweled woman center-frame — especially the expression of youthful joy on her face — demands and deserves our attention. However I think the young woman closest to us is feeling something more nuanced, mysterious and without a definite bottom to it, as shown most subtlety in her three fingers ever-so-tenderly handling a golden necklace.

Pictures of people absorbed in thought constitute a genre of photography, supplementing pervasive family & friends portraiture. The daydream image depicts a person inhabiting a separate world, documenting the odd frown or smile perhaps, but mostly revealing slack facial muscles, a blank sameness while the subject might be rehearsing silently an important upcoming conversation, or re-hashing with slight forehead worry lines an event from the recent past. These virtual happenings do not touch the ground, so portray very little of the deeper self.

Something is happening here to dissolve categories  A glow proceeds from our Mona Lisa; a beatific vision has expressed itself on an average woman’s face. Our subject appears to leave the present moment completely, yet she remains here with us in a grounded way, more fully than she would if we had caught her paying close attention to the band. A past moment has come vividly to her mind I think — has ignited — and is burning before our eyes.