essays
Window Worlds
exploring a thin slice of universe
Even though the timing and subject matter seem to suggest it, this is not a lockdown project. It isn’t solitude turned art and my muse wasn’t named Quarantine. As a matter of fact, I have yet to be constrained by any rigid lockdown measure although I have been asking for it in three different countries so far. One of them had imposed a strict confinement prior to my arrival, and another introduced it after my departure.
That this series of photos could very well be born in a lockdown home is mere coincidence. My senses weren’t sharpened by isolation, nor did I actively look to find and shoot the extra in the ordinary within a tight domestic radius, when one night I spotted a whole cluster of galaxies in the frosted glass of a bathroom window I had known forever.
"My previous obliviousness to the obvious, to something so strangely beautiful, can only be attributed to the eternal sleep of the wake, the attention lost in everyday attentiveness."
My previous obliviousness to the obvious, to something so strangely beautiful, can only be attributed to the eternal sleep of the wake, the attention lost in everyday attentiveness. Now, a closer look revealed hidden worlds populating this thin layer between inside and outside, dynamic worlds that were not trapped inside the glass but moved through it most elegantly, popping into and out of existence wherever light met the eye at the right or wrong angle.
Streetlight, brake light, flashlight, bubbly light, dark light, bright light, light light; every light was its own realm in this thin slice of universe. And each one had its own temperature – purple, orange, green, red – neighbors and strangers along the color spectrum coming together in an orgy of textures.
"[...] as though this surrealism was an extension of reality rather than a parallel fantasy world, something beyond real, ultra-natural, hyper-aesthetical, divinely logical, a mighty grandness hidden away in the miniature, in the macros of the micro, and a harmonic and coherent falling together of particles in the grander scheme of the wider angle."
No postproduction tricks were performed on these photographs, yet somehow they appear surreal, like computer visualizations of themselves. And while this unintended effect irritates me, something about it speaks to me, as though this surrealism was an extension of reality rather than a parallel fantasy world, something beyond real, ultra-natural, hyper-aesthetical, divinely logical, a mighty grandness hidden away in the miniature, in the macros of the micro, and a harmonic and coherent falling together of particles in the grander scheme of the wider angle.
