Impressões began during my first visit to Setúbal, where I found myself experiencing a place not through familiarity, but through discovery. Walking through streets, cafés, harbor spaces, and public squares, I became aware of how deeply atmosphere shapes perception. The statues, monuments, and Mediterranean light felt almost alive — as though memory, history, and imagination were sharing the same space. That experience became the starting point for Impressões.

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The project grew from a question:

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How do different places leave different emotional impressions on us?

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Using AI and digital transformation, I extend photographs beyond documentation while remaining anchored in lived experience. The images exist between memory and record, reflecting how places are felt as much as they are seen. Across different places, the work is guided by impressões — impressions formed through observation, memory, repetition, and return.

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The images originate in time spent within a place: streets walked repeatedly, conversations overheard, routines observed, changing light revisited across seasons and years. What interests me is not simply how a place appears at a single moment, but how perception changes through return. Familiarity alters attention. Atmosphere accumulates. Places begin to carry emotional weight beyond their physical form.

Each location required its own visual language.

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In Setúbal, the imagery leans into Mediterranean atmosphere, fantasy, and symbolism. Statues seem to awaken, public spaces feel theatrical, and history coexists naturally with daily life.

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In Shepherdstown, the focus became community and human interaction. After years of living there, my impression of the town centered on familiarity, ritual, conversation, and shared presence. The imagery draws inspiration from Norman Rockwell and the idealized small-town American tradition, emphasizing warmth, storytelling, and connection between people.

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Arlington presented a different challenge. Unlike Shepherdstown or Setúbal, Arlington does not reveal its history as visibly. Its identity feels layered beneath glass towers, transit corridors, redevelopment, and constant movement. To express that feeling, the work became influenced by both Edward Hopper and Giorgio de Chirico — Hopper through his portrayals of emotional distance and quiet coexistence within urban life, and de Chirico through his sense of metaphysical stillness, suspended time, and psychological atmosphere. Mid-century references, neon remnants, and traces of 1950s Arlington appear throughout the work, suggesting the transitional period when Arlington evolved from a quieter landscape into a modern urban center beside Washington. The result is a vision of Arlington where multiple eras seem to overlap — modern and historical, populated yet solitary, familiar yet elusive.

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At the same time, these projects are not intended as complete or objective portraits of the places they depict. Each series views its subject through a deliberately focused emotional lens — one that emphasizes certain atmospheres, relationships, tensions, and ways of moving through public life while inevitably leaving others outside the frame.

 

In Shepherdstown, the imagery often highlights warmth, familiarity, shared ritual, and visible interaction across generations and communities. The work leans toward an idealized vision of small-town public life shaped through observation, memory, and aspiration. Yet the town itself, like any real place, is more complicated than any single portrayal can contain — shaped as much by absence, division, solitude, and social challenges as by connection and belonging.

 

Arlington is approached through a different emotional lens. Many of the images emphasize parallel lives, emotional distance, anonymity, and the quiet separation that can exist within dense urban environments. Yet this too is an interpretive emphasis rather than a literal conclusion about the people who live there. Arlington contains deep communities, friendships, routines, and forms of connection that exist alongside the more detached atmosphere explored in the work.

 

Rather than claiming definitive truth, these perspectives are meant to function as impressions — heightened ways of seeing that invite reflection about how places shape identity, behavior, memory, and public life. In some cases, the images may even serve as starting points for broader questions: What defines a place emotionally? What does a community emphasize about itself? What remains unseen, unresolved, or left outside the frame?

 

Together, the projects are not meant to define these places objectively. They reflect how these places impressed themselves upon me — emotionally, visually, and psychologically. While the locations overlap in many ways, each carries its own dominant atmosphere, rhythm, and sense of human presence.

 

Impressões is ultimately about the relationship between place and perception: how cities and towns are not only seen, but felt, remembered, and imagined over time. You may also want to check out some videos related to these thoughts. I'd love to hear your thoughts after you've had a chance to review some of my work. You can email me at dave@finephotoworks.com or us the contact form.

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- David Ehrlich