By Susan Aurinko
For the last 15 years or more, I’ve been fascinated by the layering created in reflections, in store windows in particular. I challenge myself to see how many layers I can create in a single image – all done in camera, of course, never with Photoshop. These images often include mannequins, (another fascination of mine) photographs of models, or clothing suspended in the shop windows. Add the reflections of buildings opposite the windows, people cars, or bicycles passing by, and you have a multi-dimensional image on a single plane. These thought-provoking images are not only shown in exhibitions and collected by art collectors but have found their way into my scarf designs. For example, two new scarves titled “One Way Olive” and “One Way Violet” are from the same photograph – a feminine eye gazes out at you from above a torn poster as a car passes by. This and others are the series I’ve titled “Reflets” on my website, and truly, I can’t stop myself from composing these images wherever I travel.
Another good example is the “St Petersburg” scarf, a collaboration with Federica Ghidelli, who took a photograph I shot in Russia, layered my layers with another layer – a rough stucco wall I’d shot in Vienna, and added a raw, hand-drawn black border, creating one of my all-time favorite scarves. The image itself hangs in my studio, printed on aluminum, as glossy as the window I shot it in. I prefer to print these “reflets” that way to replicate the essence of the reflection, causing the viewer to become part of the piece as he or she is reflected as yet another layer.
Not all the reflections become scarves, some are just pieces of art, as in the case of those below. I’m endlessly fascinated by them, finding this to be another dimension of street photography. The action of the street is there, but enhanced as it were, by the addition of other layers of textures and figures. Whether in black and white or in color, I love the challenge of finding the possibilities and lining the elements up just perfectly to capture the scene in the best possible way. I’ve stood around in front of a window for close to half an hour to get the shot just right – waiting for the perfect car or the right pedestrians to pass by, becoming part of my photograph. In street photography, people become characters in the day to day play that is the urban environment and unwittingly participate in in my photographs.
Sometimes, color causes confusion, or certain colorful elements are disruptive to the purity of the photograph. Those are the cases when creating the image in black and white is most helpful, removing distracting colors or random colorful items from the frame. Below are a pair of images that are much stronger in black and white than they were in color. The “bones” of the images were good – the composition, the forms, but color detracted from the image, so I made the decision to shift to black and white, to good result.
Lastly, of course, my numerous self-portraits are all done in reflective materials – windows, doors, mirrors. I’m the one model who is always available, and like my Reflets series, I use the things and people behind me to add intrigue to these images.
