The Mirror in the Leaves
When I was seven, I spent an entire afternoon trying to catch my own reflection in the surface of a rain barrel. I wanted to see if the person looking back at me was the same one who walked away when I turned my head. I leaned over the edge until my nose almost touched the water, watching the ripples distort my face into something wild and unrecognizable. It was a strange, quiet game of hide-and-seek with myself. I realized then that we are always two people: the one who acts and the one who watches. We spend our lives trying to reconcile the two, hoping that if we stand still enough in the right light, the observer and the observed might finally become one. It is a lonely pursuit, yet there is a peculiar comfort in knowing that we are the only ones who can truly witness our own existence. What happens to the version of ourselves that we leave behind in the woods when we walk back home?
Mirka Krivankova has captured this quiet duality in her work titled Selfie Portrait in the Forest. It feels like a moment of recognition found in the middle of nowhere. Do you ever feel like you are meeting yourself for the first time in the places you least expect?
