Dean is a photographer and image maker based in New Jersey

deandrawsstudio@gmail.com
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As artists we are always asked why we make work by ourselves, colleges or condescending family members. But I understand why when I tell people I take pictures of strangers they give me a funny look. I never really had a good answer until this past year when I discovered my new favorite word, sonder. Sonder n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you. I make work to capture that story which I only see a very small part of. Whether photographing a wedding or protest lives can change within 1/1000 of a second and to let those stories go by and not record them is a sin to me.