An artist response to Adad Hannah’s “All is Vanity (Mirrorless Version),” a 2009 artist’s video-staging of a historical drawing by Charles Allen Gilbert in 1892. My rendition challenges the notion of a mirror through a photographic lens and manual processes, as well Hannah’s concept of “mirrorless” without using twins, and digs into the important of the before and after (the original and the copy).
This 5-piece series explores themes of transcendence and mortality in an illusionistic manner featuring metaphors of flowers, the mirror, water, the candle, and the skull. Unlike Hannah’s, the actors are not twins, but my own sisters approximately 8 years apart. The set up occurred in our mother’s living room, of which her drapery provided a great backdrop. I constructed the mirror’s frame out of foam core, hot glue, gold tissue paper, and black shoe polish; there is no actual mirror. Instead, there is a separate backdrop with shear white drapery behind the background actor and the frame placed in between both actors to give the illusion of a mirror. I placed all of the items and the actors in very particular positions to achieve this.
From top left to bottom right: The first photo demonstrates the behind the scenes process as a reflection in a real mirror, with the artist, myself, on the far left. The second photo is a candlelit long exposure of about 10 seconds and depicts the reflection of the same negative. The right side is the true negative and the left is the reflection. The third is a normal shot of the scene with two models, one posing as a reflection of the other. The fourth is an exposure of about 1-2 seconds where I instructed the foreground model to begin facing the background actor and slowly turn towards the camera. The background actor sat as still as possible. The fifth is a double exposure, of which I layered two negatives over one another. Lastly, colour photo and video versions of the setup.
