Pamela Shephard’s new web project Snap Judgments is a brilliant ode to personal style. Snap Judgements is featured on the hip group blog, Infinite Critique. Shephard collects impromptu photos and bios from New Yorkers that catch her eye on the street. Each day she posts a new subject and the viewer is encouraged to look at the photo and express whatever comes to mind without the benefit of any biographical information. The next day, the real bio of the subject is posted along side a new photo and the process starts over again.

Our reliance on our ability to judge people based on appearance is unarguable. As the world urbanizes and the amount of people we encounter each day grows for the average human, this tendency becomes at once a necessary skill and a dangerous compulsion. I remember getting off the train after commuting from Midtown Manhattan to Brooklyn feeling drained like I had watched a half hour of MTV with my face mashed against the screen. The art of checking out strangers and arranging them logically in your mental universe is taxing and can become isolating.

By sharing the experience of voyeurism, Shephard allows us a moment of freedom from the calculated and stilted nature of urban people watching. We are in this instance, allowed to stare and more importantly we are allowed to judge. The truth of this person will not be suppressed forever beneath the pile of prejudices that cloud our vision. Each of the characters is redeemed in the end when find out not only what Shephard’s “assumptions” were, but the “absolute truth.” Shephard is clearly aware that truth is not absolute. The truth in this case is a negotiation between the viewer and the viewed that writes a story and makes both better for its telling. We find out for instance that Terry’s “favorite cigar is a triple maduro camacho” or that “mother actually had a dream of a witch pointing to an ocean…which she registered as a sign that she needed to get over her fears of water.” No. None of that “What is your number one style tip?” clichisms for Shephard.

I once heard a lecture by literary theorist Rey Chow who proposed that Freud’s unconscious was misunderstood as an invisible layer submerged below conscious activity that-like the tip of an iceberg-is only a decoy for what lies beneath. Chow’s unconscious lives on the surface and is only hidden from us by our lack of attention. Pamela’s attention to detail seems to confirm this idea. She sees a realm of communication that is completely out in the open for anyone with eyes to see. For her, style is not the cover of the book, it is an intricate and irreducible conversation spoken in the language of texture, color, and shape.

To check out Snap Judgments go to Infinite Critique and click on fashion. Click on the title of any of the SJ subjects.