‘"The particular action of the light upon the mind, the effects of all kinds of luminous vibrations must be investigated, along with new ways of spreading the light waves, in sheets, in fusillades of fiery arrows..."…”
First Manifesto, Theatre of Cruelty, 1953 - Antonin Artaud
The duality
For reason of psychological function, a mirror only reflects masks – a virtual image of a conditioned subject. Being only a system of light reflections, the camera is the condition of the first Interior, in the second Interior demanding of the dramatic ‘persona’ to perform ‘in mask’ the subject matter out of the Standards of the Human Comedy. Thus by recording and more to this point creating it as a photographic event, that one becomes both the actor and its own spectator (the reflection and the reflected) of one’s own performance using the rhetoric of one’s own psyche as it is played in front of the camera. It is perceived through the lens, then resolved in a photographic image that becomes a physical object of our transient perception.
Seen as such, recipient of the subject matter which it contained fixed in its space, the photograph becomes a momentary theatrical event with the audience affirming the reflection of the archetypical image in that mirrored subconscious, the second Interior.
The stage/space continuum and the assimilated depth of vision with its focus as the point of convergence, moves toward a radical time/space disjunction; one is an existential live performance for the ‘mirror’, the other a ‘one frame’ long event and visual narration.