Looking at Each Other | Mark Lindsay
The camera makes me feel like a skulking voyeur. Pointing the damned thing at people makes them nervous. Therefore, I often walk around with my camera as if I were a cat tiptoeing on a sheet of aluminum foil. Cat owners who have actually seen their feline doing this will appreciate what I mean. More times than not, I want to be invisible.
When I feel myself getting shy or paranoid I start photographing my reflection. I'm a willing subject, even when I'm cranky, and I really don't care what I look like in my images. Sometimes the worse I look the better the image is.
Besides being a convenient method of self-portrait, the reflection deepens the complexity of an image and reveals the elusiveness of reality. Children intuitively grab at reflections like they do soap bubbles. Both are elusive. Children understand the multiple planes of reality.
A reflection is so deep and complex that each viewer sees something different in it. Whether our own reflection is bouncing back at us or not, reflections are mirrors of our soul. We see into them what we must. And so I photograph them as often as I can, especially when I feel that blasted aluminum foil under my feet.
“A lot of my early work, especially the reflections, was about what I call the surrealism of everyday life...picking out the strangeness in the world we live in. Those doors are doors that could lead you to other worlds, or what is behind what is in front of you.”