2020 · Kodak E100 · 35mm
Chunking is the brain’s way of managing complexity. Faced with too much information, it groups things into familiar patterns. We see a “tree” rather than a specific arrangement of light, bark, and motion. We hear “language” rather than discrete sounds. This is efficient. It allows us to act quickly and navigate the world with minimal cognitive load.
2022 · Kodak Ektar 100 · 35mm
But chunking is also a filter. It compresses experience into usable forms, which means it also discards detail. The finer texture of perception—those aspects that don’t fit cleanly into pre-existing categories—often gets lost. Chunking helps us function, but it limits how deeply we engage with what’s in front of us.
2010 · Fomapan 100 · 35mm
Being present with a scene—just looking, without trying to interpret or summarize—can slow down this compression. The usual labels don’t come as quickly. You stop seeing a “forest” and start noticing individual shades of green, irregular leaf patterns, subtle shifts in air and light. The standard mental shortcuts lose their grip.
2022 · Fuji Provia 100 · 4×5
This kind of attention doesn’t reject chunking—it simply doesn’t feed it. It doesn’t rush to organize or explain. What’s seen isn’t forced into a role. It’s not “background” or “object” or “symbol.” It’s just there. When perception isn’t guided by utility or goal, things begin to appear more fully, not more magically, but more accurately.
2020 · Kodak E100 · 35mm
With sustained attention, the usual structure of focus changes. Details that normally fade into the periphery stay in view. The hum of insects, the way a shadow moves slightly over time—these aren’t “important,” but they become part of the experience in a way that resists hierarchy. Nothing is emphasized. Nothing is dismissed.
2020 · Ilford HP5 · 35mm
Language becomes slower to apply. The urge to name what’s seen—tree, cloud, ground—starts to feel off. Not wrong, but insufficient. The gap between word and experience becomes harder to ignore. This doesn’t lead to awe or transcendence. It just clarifies how often language flattens what it describes.
2022 · Kodak E100 · 35mm
When chunking recedes, the pressure to interpret weakens. There’s no need to make sense of the scene, to relate it to something else, to prepare it for memory. Things stop being examples of other things. The moment doesn’t have to be significant. It just is what it is.
2022 · Kodak Portra160 · 35mm
This shift can be quieting. The mind becomes less busy. Not emptied, just less focused on sorting and labeling. It’s a different kind of attention—not analytical, not distracted, just steady. There’s a kind of clarity in it, not because something special is happening, but because nothing extra is being imposed.
2019 · Fomapan 100 · 35mm
Eventually, the sense of being the one looking can also soften. Not disappear, but recede a little. The distance between observer and scene isn’t as sharp. Without the usual mental structures organizing what’s seen, the division between internal and external becomes less useful. What’s left is not insight or revelation, but contact.
Text from GPT-4-turbo, April 2024 Series of Prompts…
Do you know the definition of “chunking” in neuroscience?
I’m looking for a 9 paragraph essay on how being present with a scene allows our instinctive chunking to dissipate.
Just got too flowery, too saccarine as it went along. Tone that down a bit.