Don’t you just hate it when you walk up to, say, a dark Rembrandt
painting and instead of seeing, a work by the old master, you see a reflection
of your old self?
Finnish photographer Jorma Puranen,
not only doesn't mind reflection off a painted surface, he embraces it. Earlier
this year at the Armory Show, I encountered his photographs of glare-frosted
paintings, part of a series called "Shadows, Reflections, and All That Sort of
Thing."
Puranen photographs historic portraits as objects, emphasizing
the reflective surfaces and aged paint. By obscuring the image, Puranen reveals
a whole lot about how we see.
While looking at these ghostly apparitions it became clear
how committed we are to our suspension of disbelief, when viewing traditional
portraiture. Maintaining the illusion is so essential, that our brains
automatically edit out any environmental factor that may interfere with our
peering into the soul of the sitter. That is, the illusion of a sitter whose
image our brain has allowed itself to be deceived into seeing.
All but the last two images here are from the website of the
Helsinki School. The last two, are my photos of the pictures, from the Armory Show, where you'll see I had no choice but to embrace the glass.
No comments:
Post a Comment