The Mirror ( O Espelho)

The project is a serie of 18 photographs. Photographs are images staged in a studio according to a script based on an anonymous eighth-century Japanese tale. Images are sequential according to the script, and made in the style of manga, a Japanese comic storytelling, with little use of images and text. The first picture is the "cover" of manga - the title of the short story "The Mirror". The sequence of photos is from right to left, like in the manga. Most photographs (10) is composed of two images, when the reading is from the top down. Both images convey an action, in sequence. There are 7 pictures (beyond the "hood") composed of a single image, which convey an emotion, a feeling. The manga, one of the pillars of the world's current pop culture, has a strong presence in national publications comics. It is characterized by high reader engagement through emotionally expressive effects and fragmented moments. The viewer / reader has to combine and relate these fragmented times to get the whole idea. The photograph was made with Fresnel lighting, used in film and highlights emotions through gestures and faces of the characters. The colors are used to convey the feelings of the protagonists. The tale is about a peasant who returns home after a long absence. He brings with him a mirror. He looks in the mirror, thinking that the mirror is a picture of his father, and puts it in a box. The wife comes to greet him, seeing that he put something in the box, and asks if it is a gift for her. Understanding that is not, she opens the box, sees a woman in the mirror and think it's a lover. The couple begins to fight. Their daughter enters and understands that the fight is about the box content. She opens the box and sees a girl in the mirror. She tells the parents that there is no reason to fight because the girl in the mirror is her. "They say everything is an illusion. More precisely, everything is a perception" (Eldon Taylor). Do we actually perceive reality? Can we ee our true face through a mirror? What do we see when we look in the mirror?