David Trood

The book

Written by David Trood - March 10, 2011

NB: The first print of the book has run out. A new edition might be released after 20th March 2012…depending on the number of requests here in the comments>>>

This is the story of my life, not only as a man on a quest to discover the source of creativity, but as a photographer who has always believed that I don’t take pictures of people and nature—of life—but simply show up and receive what life chooses to show me. I have had considerable success as a photographer, but I take little credit for it. You see, I have been led—guided—by an inner voice, a voice I truly don’t know the source of. It seems at once to be an inner voice and an outer one. Mine and not mine. I like to think of it as the voice of humanity, perhaps even the voice of Life itself, calling to me to capture a moment in time, every one of which reveals another nugget of now in the unfolding mystery of human life and the evolution of our planet.

The voice has been with me since I was a boy. It remains with me now that I am a grown man, a husband, a father. Sometimes it whispers to me in dreams, taking me to times and places I can almost, but not quite, remember in my waking life. Sometimes when I am on assignment, not quite sure how I am going to “get the shot” in a difficult situation, it advises me, coaxing me to take this road instead of that one, to give up my seat in the fully booked plane and take a car instead. Very often the switch results in my being in the right place at the right time to turn what could have been a mundane photo shoot into something unexpected and even spectacular—the photos that get to the very heart of the moment, and that get noticed and have led to my success. Sometimes it even commands me to grab my camera and get to the window or trek up a mountain or turn the other way in a crowd now and I do—and I get those once-in-a-lifetime shots that every photographer dreams of.

After decades as a photographer, this voice—talking to me more as intense feelings than through words—became more insistent, germinating within me the idea for a project that I thought, at first, was crazy: capture the face of humanity. For most of my life I had been seeking answers to a question that I think most artists ponder—from where does creativity come?—and I had been getting answers, but none truly satisfied me. I came to the realization, finally, that creativity is more than seeing something in a novel way. It actually was the act of seeing itself, but seeing past surfaces to the core—to the soul of the moment and the subject. I came to realize that most of us look but don’t see. Light enters our eyes but it may not truly illuminate us.

When I heeded these intense feelings and undertook the project, I realized, most importantly, that we are all alike—no matter our ethnicity, culture, age, social conditions, or anything else. What is truly important is that we see each other, not just our surfaces but our souls, and in each other find ourselves. The saying goes that the eyes are the window to the soul. Cliché as that saying is, it possessed me. I became driven to record the face—and through the eyes, the soul—of humanity, to help us see that we are One. By the end of this book, you will understand what I mean. More than six hundred people are captured in this two images—one male and one female—that represent the composite face of humanity. You may not have been one of them, but you are part of the resulting image nonetheless. I trust that by the end of the book you will understand that as well.

My story is not mine alone. If we are One, then it is yours as well. You too can hear the voice I heard, although you may not actively listen to it. I urge you to, for it will lead you into the core of your creativity, which is your life. May you have as much enjoyment as I did on the adventure, may you learn and grow as much I did, and may you journey back round to find your place in the great circle of Life, as I did.