What are they thinking?
What are they thinking?
Do you even know what you're thinking?
Students will find a real photograph of a real, non-famous person and write an internal monologue capturing what that person might be thinking in the exact moment the photo was taken.
The goal is not to tell the person’s life story, but to imagine a single human moment—unfinished, unpolished, and untouched by a public narrative.
Students are strongly encouraged to use candid photography rather than posed portraits.
https://unsplash.com/s/photos/candid-people
Select a photo that:
Shows a real person (not famous, not recognizable as a public figure)
Captures a candid or quiet moment
Suggests emotion, tension, thought, or movement
Avoid:
Famous people or historical events
Images that already come with a strong story attached
Photos meant to be inspirational, heroic, or symbolic
Spend at least a few minutes only looking.
Ask yourself:
Where are they?
What just happened?
What might happen next?
What detail keeps pulling your attention?
Focus on small clues: posture, hands, eyes, distance, light, surroundings.
Write in first person, as if you are inside the subject’s head at that exact moment.
Present tense recommended
One moment, not a lifetime
Thoughts can wander, contradict themselves, or loop
Silence and uncertainty are allowed
Avoid Certainty
This is not about explaining the person.
Let the voice be unsure, distracted, defensive, hopeful, tired, or fragmented.
Cut anything generic.
Replace big ideas with:
Sensory detail
Concrete observations
Small, human thoughts
"Proteus" from Ulysses by James Joyce (Link)
Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Sallinger (Link)
Do not stereotype or reduce the subject to an identity label
Do not invent trauma just to make the piece dramatic
Stay grounded in what the image suggests, not what you want it to prove
Close observation
Empathy without ownership
Writing interiority
Ethical imagination
Letting moments remain unresolved