Windows or Mirrors

Some time ago I attended an exhibition at the Hermitage Museum of Lausanne, Switzerland.  Under the enticing title of “Windows”, a great number of paintings from artists like Matisse, Rothko and Magritte among others entranced visitors with the symbolic and metaphorical meanings of windows in the arts. In painting after painting, windows appeared in many different ways, unveiling a myriad of connotations: Mystery or transparency, freedom or reclusion, joy or sadness, loneliness or openness, order or chaos…

Walking around the museum, I could not avoid making certain connections with the world of photography, and how this very same concept of the window has always haunted the expectations of our field to be considered as a valuable medium of artistic expression.

When photography was first introduced to society, it was presented as a technological feat able to reproduce reality with a degree of exactitude never seen before. Photography offered itself as the perfect tool to document the world, transferring it to a flat bi-dimensional form of media to be shared with others. It did not take many years before it was adopted by the pioneers of landscape photography who roamed the western USA with mules loaded with heavy cameras and glass plates in search of capturing accurate views of “new” landscapes. In 1835, William Fox Talbot created the first negative ever produced, “A latticed window in Lacock Abbey, England” certainly without realizing that this very photograph portrayed how this new invention was going to be considered from that moment on; a window to reality. Indeed, was not photography a mere virtual frame of a small piece of the universe carefully chosen by the photographer? With photography representing the perfect literal tool, so came the end of painting as a medium to portray reality, helping it evolve into a more figurative way of representing the world. From that moment on, photography was to rule in the name of reality and painting would continue its journey in the name of art.

Giraffe Symphony – NamibiaIn 1960, John Szarkowski, head of the photography department of the MoMa in New York, inaugurated the exhibition “Windows and Mirrors”. According to Mr. Szarkowski, photographs could be associated with two different forms of expression. Photographs as mirrors were defined as “romantic expressions of the photographer’s sensibility as it projected itself on the things and sights of this world”, whereas photographs conceived as windows would “explore the exterior world in all its presence and reality”. Even if all photographers included in the exhibition were in “pursuit of beauty, and that format integrity that pays homage to the dream of a meaningful life”, a clear distinction in their objectives had been made by Szarkowski and with it a strong affirmation of the possibility of using photography as a perfectly plausible medium of personal artistic expression. Not a single photograph hung from the walls of any art gallery in New York at the time of the exhibition.

Half a century later, I am writing these lines as a fine art photographer. As Szarkowski said, I have always been focused on experiencing the dream of a meaningful life by means of a camera. However, my initial motivations of using photography to merely dissect a piece of the universe have increasingly evolved into something different and more personal. Today, in this modern world of technology, ultra high resolution cameras and HDR, I am no longer particularly interested in creating windows through which the viewer can observe technically perfect renditions of reality. I no longer desire to create photographs full of detail which show everything and leave little room for the imagination, photographs which merely depict a beautiful rendition of a certain place. What I want is to create photographs where the viewer can peer into my own soul, that reveal the dreams, fears and emotions which accompany me through life.  

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