The Mirror of Illusions

This photograph, like many others by the same photographer, is about photography itself — and in more than one way. On the one hand, the picture seems to push linear perspective to its furthest possible limit. On the other hand, and based on this very structure, we see a clear vista. Clear in two senses: we clearly see a forested landscape and also the picture is brighter than it ought to be — at least the upper half of it. It feels as though the image is overexposed. Yet within this brightness, a haze has crept in — an ambiguity. We are not used to see a forest in such whiteness; it is as if the reflection of it in the water, the inverted image caught in a bowl, is more forest-like than the forest itself. It’s enough to rotate the image before us by 180 degrees. That inversion somehow resembles the forest more — provided the ripples of the water allow it, and the tremor does not pass into the heart of the woods. As we look at the photograph, we constantly swap the darkroom for the bright room — constantly replacing the world with the photograph, and the photograph with the world.

It is a futile longing to wish to replace the world with the photograph — no matter how intoxicating this desire may be. This landscape photograph reveals just that.

But a photograph is a photograph.