Tim Hawkinson | Octopus | Cindy Sherman | Untitled Film Still #82 | Robert Glenn Ketchum | Lakeshore in Morning Fog | Abelardo Morell | Camera Obscura Image of the Grand Tetons in Resort Room, Jackson Hole, Wyoming | John Sanchez | Rachel Rosenthal, Artist | Mitch Epstein | Buena Vista, Colorado | Leland Rice | Volkswagen With Figure | Catherine Wagner | The Lamps of 1900 | Ned Sloane | Telephone Pole Piece, Los Angeles: Photograph of Kim Jones | Andrew Freeman | #3.4.04- Don Becker's Garage & Guesthouse, Independence, California N36O.48.229 - W118O.11.620 | Ken Gonzales-Day | Franklin Avenue (1920) | Jo Ann Callis | Man in Tie | Bruce Nauman | Burning Small Fires (Artist Book) | Annie Leibovitz | Scarlett Johansson, Chateau Marmont, West Hollywood | David Maisel | Oblivion 1382-52p | Gilbert B. Weingourt | Timothy Leary | Richard Misrach | Untitled (Ocotillo) | Edward Steichen | Sylvia Sidney, Hollywood | Ruben Ochoa | Fwy Wall Extraction | Hunter S. Thompson and others | From "Gonzo" | Henry Wessel | Las Vegas No. 15 | James Fee | Epiphany | John Baldessari | Face (with Red Nose): Plus Four Alternate Noses | Anthony Hernandez | Everything #2 | Ansel Adams | Graduation dress | Loretta Ayeroff | Mountain View, Edris Drive | Grant Mudford | Walt Disney Concert Hall, Under Construction #7 | Frederick Sommer | Stendhal | Tina Modotti | Interior of the Church Tower at Tepotzotlan | Henri Cartier-Bresson | Mexico City | Irving Penn | Hell's Angels, San Francisco | William Dassonville | From Glacier Point | Christina Fernandez | Fashion International | Mark Laita | Air Traffic Controller, Todd Phipps, Palmdale, California, May 5, 2006
Juggler, Sergey Gripkov, Los Angeles, February 21, 2000 | Mark Wyse | Untitled Landscape | U.S. Air Force 1352nd Photographic Group, Lookout Mountain Station | Sugar, 1.2 Kilotons, Nevada | Julius Shulman | Von Sternberg Residence, Northridge | Joaquin Trujillo | Amy, Los Ninos | Robert Heinecken | Shiva Manifesting as a Single Mother | Han Nguyen | Tsunami | Melanie Einzig | Bikram Yoga Instructor, North Beach, San Francisco | John Patrick Salisbury | Untitled No. 134 | Karen Halverson | Gamble House Entry | Bill Owens | 4th of July Parade, Pleasanton, California | Catherine Opie | My Studio, Suzanne's Work | Eliot Porter | Reflections in Pool, Escalante River, Utah | Adam Bartos | Los Angeles | Stan Honda | From the Heart Mountain Barracks Project | Hiromu Kira | The Thinker | Jeff Mermelstein | Yosemite National Park, California | Lewis Baltz | West Wall, Unoccupied Industrial Structure, 20 Airway Drive, Costa Mesa | Dennis Hopper | Robert Irwin | Hansel Mieth and Otto Hagel | S.F. Water Front | Edward Burtynsky | Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley, California | Beahan & McPhee | Almond Trees and Flood Irrigation, Oakdale | Larry Sultan | Boxers, Mission Hills | Isabel Gomes | Blue Horizon, Santa Rosa Island | Edward Weston | Cabbage Leaf | Anthony Friedkin | Offshore Winds, Zuma Beach | Richard Long | Donner Pass Circle: Along a 20 Day Walk from Ebbetts Pass to the North Fork Feather River Sierra Nevada California 2005 | John Swope | Dorothy McGuire, Beverly Hills | Hans-Christian Schink | LA Night #1 | Herve Friend | Redlands From Smiley Hill | Joel Sternfeld | Queen of the Prom, the Range Nightclub, Slab City, California |
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| Loretta Ayeroff Mountain View, Edris Drive 2006 © Loretta Ayeroff LL/16146 Photo Synthesis
Colin Westerbeck
This picture reminds me of a 1978 exhibition by John Szarkowski, who was then director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Titled "Mirrors and Windows," it distinguished between two types of photographers: Romantics interested in self-expression and Realists focused on objective reality. A photograph was either "a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world."
The distinction can prove slippery, though. Loretta Ayeroff's photograph is both window and mirror an image of a window as a mirror. Three-quarters of this view from her studio show us the bright landscape we recognize as L.A. But the other quarter, in the sash at lower right, turns dark, moody and mysterious because it is part reflection of a view through the adjacent sash that we cannot see directly.
We are looking right at the banister rail in the foreground, but where is the faint third banister we see beyond? The dim, illogical relationships in this part of the picture are typical of the subjective experience Szarkowski ascribed to mirrors. That the aberration should occupy only one-quarter of the view is about right. Mirrors have always been the minority report in photography.
[Originally published in West Magazine : November 5, 2006, p.13]
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