Substance and Reflection

In December 2023, I photographed the sky reflected on the surface of water, and it sparked an interest in reflections. Since then, I’ve kept photographing images reflected in mirrors and water.

At first, I thought I was drawn to the phenomenon of reflection itself, to the reflected image itself. I was drawn to how it took on a different mood from a photograph of reality taken directly.

As I kept photographing with mirrors, I noticed something. A reflection shot cleanly, on its own, is boring. It’s almost the same as photographing reality directly. Strictly speaking it’s a virtual image, so it isn’t the same—but structurally, it’s close.

So what was I actually drawn to? Photographing further while trying to find out, I realized: when a mirror’s scratches, stains, or the distortion of its surface show up in the reflected image, I suddenly find myself drawn to it. Not the pure image of reality, and not the reflection alone, but “the substance that makes the reflection possible, and the reflection itself”—I was drawn to the layering of those two.

What I was drawn to was never the phenomenon of reflection, or the reflected image. It was this structure—two layers overlapping.