About
A project about seeing.
And being seen.
The origin
Jock McDonald has spent 40 years photographing people. In fields and kitchens, in Cuba and Russia, in classrooms and community centers. He has always believed that a face, properly seen, tells you everything worth knowing.
A few years ago, something shifted. At farmers markets, at dinner tables, at bus stops across Sonoma County, people had stopped looking at each other. Not out of hostility. Out of habit. Heads down. Screens up. The quiet erosion of eye contact.
Eye to Eyes is his response. Not a lament. An invitation. To look up. To sit down. To be seen
The van that started it all.
Jock building the mobile studio by hand.
The studio, set up and ready.
THE PHILOSOPHY
To see another person is to reflect on yourself.
01.
Our Shared Humanity
We are here together. We are in it together. The exhibition amplifies our common bonds rather than our divisions.
02.
Democratization of Portraiture
Unframed, candid, and accessible images affirm the equal value of every life — regardless of title, wealth, or status.
03.
Visibility of the Overlooked
Farmers, teachers, immigrants, and laborers are honored as the backbone of community. Their faces belong in a museum.
04.
Intimacy Through Story
Handwritten reflections transform each portrait into a dialogue. Voice meets gaze. The viewer meets the subject.
05.
Art as a Collective Mirror
Every portrait forms part of a living archive. Together, they surround the viewer in the everyday dignity of their neighbors.
06.
From Sonoma to the World
A small community is part of a larger one. Sonoma within California. California within the U.S.A. The U.S.A. within the world.
Artistic lineage
Eye to Eyes stands in the tradition of Jim Goldberg's Rich and Poor and Richard Avedon's In the American West, work that brought the same uncompromising attention to ranch hands and laborers as to presidents and celebrities.
The white backdrop inherits that argument.
Remove context, profession, and status. What remains is the person. And in that reduction, something essential is revealed.
The studio at work in the heart of the community.
The white backdrop. The open air. The moment before the photograph.
Jock behind the lens.
WHERE IT'S GOING
Every portrait will be seen. All of them, together, at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art in 2027
Tell someone about Eye to Eyes
Share the project with a friend, a neighbor, or your community. The more people who know, the more faces we can photograph.