THE INS AND OUTS

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE FIRST MIRROR WAS A CALM POND, the kind of naturally reflective surface that moved Narcissus to fall in love with his own reflection, much to his later regret. Mirrors of every kind are probably one of the only universal elements in our daily visual experience. Many homes have nearly a dozen in one place or another. In addition to reflecting a reverse view of reality (itself a conflict in terms), they create the illusion of space, bounce and amplify light, and even break the world into panes and shards, partial worlds that both imitate and mock our own.

Arc Of A Diver, 2024

Small wonder that photographs are so obsessed with the impact mirrors have on our perception of what’s real, what isn’t, and what falls somewhere in between. When we build so-called “fun houses”, mazes in which to create a slightly panicky, if fun, feeling of being lost, we use mirrors to add to the confusion, to render mysterious the path in or out.

What will get me photographing a mirror (or multiple mirrors) is that very effect of getting lost in some alternate space, the “other” reality that, like Alice, we can step into, often in the hope that the mere reversal of our own world is somehow better, or at least, more interesting. Photographs themselves are lies that tell the truth, that is, they are depictions drawn from reality that, having been extracted from actuality, are immediately rendered as an abstraction of it. Maybe looking into a mirror is as close as most of us will get to entering another dimension, and maybe, just maybe, our fascination with them runs parallel to our wonder at what a camera does, rendering reality and fantasy equal, if only for an instant.