Caroline Burnett is sitting in an office with half-empty walls.

She’s trying to describe what was there just days before and what visitors to the New Mexico Museum of Art will find when they explore the museum’s new Ways of Seeing photographic exhibition.

Burnett, who began collecting decades ago with her late husband, William, says that if there’s a theme to the work she treasures, it’s the depiction of the beauty of humanity. In her case, it’s mostly black-and-white photos, and it’s mostly women radiating some kind of palpable emotion.