Raw Desire

This photo-mirror can only be seen facing itself. So here, I only imagine and dream. The name of the series is Image of Imagination. It seems that even if we sit in front of the work, the face we see is the face of imagination. The photographer tried to wipe the mirror—not completely, but partially. In the mirror, we see our "present"—a present that is fleeting and elusive. Yet, by wiping the mirror, the photographer has given memory to the mirror. Or better said, the picture behind the mirror has become its memory.I recall a 19th-century critic who called photography a mirror with memory. In the photo-mirror, we see a scattered fragment of our past.

I remember the story of the Romans and the Chinese in the first volume of Rumi’s Masnavi. There, the Chinese worked on painting, and the Romans on removing tarnish from the mirror, amazed by the play between form and formlessness. Here, the photograph weaves together that form and formlessness. It seems like a parody of that story—twisting present and past, mixing the permanence of the past with the fleetingness of the present.

My own "present" is scattered and diffused before the photo-mirror.