The Light Inside the Skin

When I was seven, my grandmother would hold a slice of orange up to the kitchen window. She told me to look through it, not at it. I remember the way the morning sun turned the fruit into a stained-glass window, revealing a hidden map of veins and tiny, glowing sacs of juice I had never noticed before. It felt like discovering a secret room inside something I thought I already knew. We spend so much of our lives glancing at the surface of things, satisfied with the color and the shape, never stopping to consider what happens when the light decides to pass through. It is a strange thing to realize that the most ordinary objects are holding onto their own internal architecture, waiting for the right angle to show us their true, luminous selves. What else are we walking past today that is currently hiding its own brilliance in plain sight?

Mirjam Poldermans Hendriks has captured this exact sense of wonder in her photograph titled Noedelsoep. She reminds us that even the simplest things possess a hidden, glowing life if we only take the time to look through them. Does this image make you want to hold your own world up to the light?