Description

Features a foreword by Rob Walker, Josh’s collaborator on Titans of Finance and author of The Art of Noticing (Knopf, 2019).

Josh Neufeld expresses his more whimsical side! The Seeing Things zine pairs a photo of something Josh saw in his everyday life — out on the streets, in the transit system, in his apartment, etc. — with his hand-drawn re-interpretation of the objects. The driving force is pareidolia — those quirky moments when we see faces or creatures in everyday objects: the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast, a cloud that looks just like a cow, a human face on the surface of the moon. Seeing Things reimagines these moments through Neufeld’s cartoonist lens, bringing hand-drawn personality to the inanimate.

From Rob Walker’s foreword:

Like any skilled artist or writer, Josh Neufeld pays attention to the world around him. He is aware of what is there. But he also sees what isn’t there — but possibly could be.  As a maker of comix, he is a skilled artist and writer, and he doesn’t so much “see faces” as recognize and express a certain humanity in the inanimate. Collected, the results are really remarkable, funny, revealing: an exasperated exercise machine, a haughty hand dryer, objects gulping, pointing urgently, asking if you like their hat, or just grunting “ook ook.”

Shared pareidolia is actually a little risky: sometimes I see a face and you just don’t. In Seeing Things, Josh takes those risks in a disarming way that’s inspiring. When you do see the face that Josh sees, the result is a kind of quiet connection. That’s the game, and the more you play along, the more you win.