A Stage Of Expressions: I Find Funny Faces In Everyday Objects, Here Are 30 Of My Pareidolia Pics

My name is Boris Blanchoz. I'm 45 years old, French, and I live in Grenoble in the French Alps, not far from Switzerland and Italy.

I'm a social worker, and I work with people who are losing their autonomy. In my job, I strive to ensure that these individuals can continue to have access to culture and socialization despite their physical or cognitive difficulties. My professional skills make me a "jack of all trades." I take these people on museum visits, culinary workshops, discussion groups, intergenerational and intercultural meetings, computer courses, reading workshops, memory workshops, and more.

For as long as I can remember, I've always paid attention to details: on objects, in landscapes, in the gestures, reactions, and non-verbal communication of the people around me, in films, etc. Details always speak volumes and tell me a lot. So it's natural for me to seek out and find these faces.

I'm neither a photographer nor an "artist." I wasn't a big fan of social networks, and yet one day, for no particular reason, I photographed one of these faces with my phone, created an Instagram account, and posted it. I quickly found an audience, which motivated me and gave me the desire to continue immortalizing them and compiling them on my @boris.sees.faces page. I'm not looking for quantity; I only post the ones I find "lively" and expressive.

The majority of these pareidolies come from discoveries I've made on my urban walks around the city. I've never really tried to "hunt" for faces; I've sometimes wandered around specifically to find them, but the majority I find when I'm not looking for them... I really think I find them when I look at objects in a certain way.

For many of these pareidolias, I can no longer see anything but the faces; I notice the faces before I see the object they're supposed to be.

These are exclusively smartphone photos that I edit using my phone's applications to make them stand out a little more.

For some time now, I've also been writing short texts, mostly in the form of poems, to accompany the photos. Often metaphorical, these poems are there to breathe even more life into these objects and provoke both philosophical reflections and smiles.

I have a few favorite pareidolias, but I'm eternally indecisive, so it's hard to choose. What I like most is that they have full expressions strong enough to convey feelings that could be our own, like the one I call "mechanical stupefaction," which appears flabbergasted, or the big toothy grin of the "movie star smile."

I also love the weathering and wearing away of pareidolia by rust, for example. Like humans, the passage of time gives them distinct characters and personalities.

Additionally, I appreciate "natural" pareidolia from trees, fruit, or stones just as much as those from objects created by humans, as long as they're the result of a certain amount of chance... otherwise, they're no longer pareidolias.