People have always been Fritz Liedtke’s favorite subjects.

He was out to dinner several years ago when he was taken with one of his dining companions, a woman with “amazing freckles.”

Liedtke asked if he could take her photograph, which he did under the light of a neon sign in front of the restaurant.

“It was one of the most beautiful photographs I had taken all year,” he says of the moment that launched him on a search for more freckled faces to photograph.

Portrait of a woman with freckles

Liedtke is interested in making beautiful images, and for him, freckles are beautiful.

But, as we all know, beauty is subjective. Look up the word “freckle” in the thesaurus and you will get one or two sweet-sounding words in the list of synonyms, like “beauty mark” and “daisy.”

But the majority are not sweet, such as “flaw,” “blotch,” and “mark.”

Portrait of a little girl with freckles

As Liedtke began talking with and photographing more friends and acquaintances who shared this prominent feature, he wasn’t surprised to discover that many held deep-rooted beliefs about this feature he found so captivating.

One loved her freckles, recalling them being referred to by her parents as “angel kisses.”

Another remembered as a child being asked by her grandmother to wash up for dinner after playing outside, then crying when her grandmother asked her to go wash again, having mistaken her freckles for dirt.

Read on via Freckles Like Veils of Stars | PROOF.