Closed Horizon

The photograph’s dimensions are unusual. It is expansive, yet this expansiveness does not follow convention: instead of being horizontal, it is vertical. It is a panoramic image but we are accustomed to panoramas stretching sideways across our field of vision. Here, however, the panorama stands upright. We expect a panoramic photograph to suggest openness, an unfolding vista, but everything here speaks of enclosure. The image’s perspective is sharp and forceful, but that depth does not open a way through this confinement. We enter the photograph through the game table and pass beyond its rigid net, only to collide with a hard wall on the other side. There is no place for a player on this side of the table, nor on the other. Following the photograph’s perspective, we climb the wall; through the open window, we fall into darkness. And if not into darkness, then into the photograph’s deep grayness, which seems to take our breath away.

We notice reflections of the sky’s light in the lower-right corner and the upper-left corner. From these two points, the image’s sense of closure and rigidity stretches toward a possible openness, toward a latent fluidity. Perhaps it is through these corners that one might find a way into open space.