Blue Steel in Brooklyn

The Simpsons parodied it. That’s the confirmation. Noah Kalina spent six years photographing his own face every single day—same expression, same dark circles, same quantity of Brooklyn sunlight apparently fixed and non-negotiable—cut it into a timelapse, uploaded it, and watched it get copied, mocked, and finally absorbed into cartoon mythology. The expression itself occupies some midpoint between practiced melancholy and a man who has received mildly disappointing news and decided to process it for the next half-decade.

What interests me more is what he shoots when he isn’t shooting himself. Topless models arranged across studio furniture with the casual authority of people who’ve accepted being looked at as a fact of life. Beautiful idlers waiting for someone to cast them in something they’d ultimately refuse. Women sprawled wide on the studio floor, unselfconscious and spread, working long props with focused intent that makes you feel you’ve walked into the middle of something. The photographs are flat and direct, slightly over-lit, as though they’re trying to push their way out of the frame from inside.

He photographed himself alongside the Black Eyed Peas, Hasselhoff, Paris Hilton. The entire mid-2000s celebrity circuit passed in front of that face and the face didn’t particularly react. I respect that kind of commitment. Most people modulate themselves for company. Kalina apparently decided his expression was a fixed coordinate and everyone else simply entered its gravity.

The original video is still worth watching. His photography, collected at noahkalina.com, is worth more than the timelapse that made him famous.