Anton Repponen found an award-winning photo project during a camera roll deep dive

If you take a look into the career of New York-based creative Anton Repponen, you’ll see that he’s been working in interaction design for over 20 years, and running the design studio he cofounded, Anton & Irene, for over a decade. There has, however, always been something running in parallel to this successful design career – photography. “I got my first film camera when I was 14 from a friend and I’ve never really stopped since,” Anton tells It’s Nice That. “I always have a camera on me, and taking photos is a constant background process for me.”

Like a lot of photographers, Anton has thousands of images across film strips, hard drives and iPhone galleries that all disappear into a blur as new projects pile on top, only to resurface when your phone decides to make a slightly uncanny, cheesily-soundtracked memories reel. But last year the creative found himself flicking through his Lightroom library (a collection that dates all the way back to 2004), looking out for any patterns that might emerge: “I’ve been taking photos for all these years, but I hadn’t really stepped back to see what I was collecting,” he says. In this in-depth rummage, a few surprising themes jumped out: “I realised I was capturing a lot of the same scenes without consciously planning it,” says the photographer.

This is where his series People Look at Art or Art Looks at People was born. A collection of photographs of people looking at art in museums and galleries around the world, the project pulls together a range of images Anton’s snapped over the years that capture something special about the act of observation — “those moments when we look at art, we see something that inspires us, something unfamiliar, or something that quietly resonates”, the photographer summarises.

Capturing a range of personalities and the art pieces in their eyeline, each of the images Anton pulled from this thread frame two subjects at once: “The viewer becomes part of the composition, and their posture, distance and stillness says a lot without it being a direct portrait,” Anton says. Although people’s reactions to the work on display remain a secret, the back of their heads facing the camera, the images invite a number of thoughts about private, contemplative moments. We’re left deciphering what each person could be thinking, or imagining what their outfit indicates about their individual tastes.

People Look at Art or Art Looks at People was just one of the series that revealed itself during Anton’s introspective research. The designer also discovered a few other long-standing threads whilst scanning his photo library last year, namely Alone in New York, and Form + Field. Similar to both of these photo projects, Anton’s keen interest in web design led the designer to build an interactive gallery for the series’ viewing, one that saw People Look at Art or Art Looks at People win the Jury’s Choice award for Ready Mag’s 2025’s Websites of The Year.

“I see the website is part of the experience, it is not just a container,” he says. “I wanted it to feel like a slow walk. The images zoom out, revealing the wider scene, and as you keep scrolling there’s a moving shadow as an abstract version of me as the photographer, moving behind the subject and capturing the moment.” An extra layer to the project that builds on this meditative moment in a museum, the site offers up a more interactive way to engage with this series of images. As, ultimately, the aim with this series is to encourage people to “want to go experience art in the place they live”, Anton ends, “to spend time with it in person, not just scroll past it.”