Photographer Places Mirrors Into Industrial and Natural Landscapes to Look Both Beyond and Behind
For Guillaume Amat‘s “Open Fields” project he placed a mirrored stand in various landscapes, reflecting the opposing environment back within the image to create a double interpretation of the surrounding scene. These reflections contain dark figures against bright fields, homes in barren landscapes, bits of foliage contained within stretches of industry, and even a horse that pops into the frame.
Each image is taken with a 4×5 inch camera, the included mirror measuring 31.5 x 47.2 inches. Amat wanted to concentrate on the double interpretation of the landscape seen outside and within the mirror, working on the concept of territory as space.
Independent curator and writer Paul Wombell compared this series to the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice saying, “With the use of the camera and a mirror Guillaume Amat has made photographic images that simultaneously look forward and backwards. They create a strange dreamlike landscape where buildings and figures float in the center of the picture and suggest that he has two sets of eyes, both at the front and back of his head. Orpheus would have been impressed.”
Amat lives and works in Paris where he mostly focuses on long-term projects to produce cohesive photographic narratives existing somewhere between documentary and poetry.
