107. Shop Window Reflections

"All mirrors are magic mirrors.” — George MacDonald

May 03, 2025

“Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call reality? — not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? … All mirrors are magic mirrors.”

— George MacDonald, Phantastes: A Faerie Romance

In Dunedin, New Zealand, the sun shoots straight down the north–south streets around midday, reducing opportunities to capture people against well-lit buildings. However, in strong light, shop windows in shadow serve well as mirrors, reflecting people and vehicles drenched in sunlight (see Post 103: Ambient Awareness).

Unlike other subjects, reflections can’t be seen from a distance — you must be standing in exactly the right spot. This means you have to look for them as you walk. It also requires you to constantly adjust your attention and imagine different results, depending on whether you focus on the surface of the glass, something inside a shop, or people passing by.

We are conditioned to accept photographs as faithful reflections of the visible world. We expect them to be readable, recognisable, and understandable. Glass and other reflective surfaces allow us to complicate this expectation by introducing ambiguity and layered perspectives. The viewer must work harder to interpret visual puzzles containing conflicting cues about space, scale, and the relative position of elements. Reflected and real objects overlap and interact, becoming pieces in a spatial game we can all play.

It is not hard to think of well-known street photographers who have used reflections in their images. The work of Saul Leiter and Vivian Maier’s self-portraits comes to mind.