J. Tomás López, professor of photography and director of electronic media in the College of Arts and Sciences, always loved taking pictures but didn’t know he could make a career of it. So he earned degrees in psychology and philosophy at Fordham University, then began counseling veterans returning from the Vietnam War. He remembers how difficult it was for them to open up, except when it involved their photos.

“Every fort had a dark room, and the vets used them extensively,” says López. “People project all sorts of things in their interpretation of a photograph, and it’s an amazing way to get them to talk.”

Seeing this impact of photography on human memory, mood, and expression, López enrolled in a Master of Media Arts program in film and video at the University of South Carolina. While there, he had a chance to study photography with Ansel Adams. He then earned a Master of Fine Arts in photography at the University of South Florida, focusing on the psychological and linguistic interpretation of images, a field known as semiotics.

To this day, López is driven by an image’s ability to reveal unexpected truths—about a person’s deepest feelings or the ways in which people accept and reject certain rules of society. In The Metro Series, which exhibited at the Lowe Art Museum this spring and is included in the U.S. Library of Congress and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, López captures nuances of “the human laboratory” on the subways of New York and Paris. All 29 images in the series were taken during seven trips to New York and three trips to Paris between 2006 and 2008. López rode the subway every day, sometimes all day, to capture that unique moment, what Roland Barthes calls the “punctum,” that enables viewers to be “pierced” by the photo. He often uses the doors of the subway car to create a diptych between riders on the inside and people outside who are anxious to board, just passing by, or in some cases getting arrested.

“Part of what I find interesting about being on any public transportation is that you surrender yourself to the trip but you put your life on hold while you are there,” López says. “You zone out. And now with the iPod phenomenon, people eliminate sound as well as eye contact.”

López, a native of Cuba who grew up in Great Neck, New York, has taught at the University of Miami since 1994. His wife, artist Carol Todaro, is also teaching in the Department of Art and Art History this year.

López has encountered his share of unfriendly people in public, including two Nicaraguan soldiers who pointed their guns at him for taking pictures at the Managua airport in 1989. “Machine gun always trumps camera,” he tells his students when they ask how a photographer should deal with uncooperative subjects. But even among the camera-shy, López usually gains trust by flashing his warm smile or sharing the digital picture he just took. He has a knack for making people feel at ease.

“Part of being a street photographer is being amusing and engaging enough that you don’t become threatening.”

—Meredith Danton