Mirror Displacement (Grassy Slope)

Robert Smithson
1969
England, U.K.
Three original 126 format chromogenic-development transparencies

Seven mirrors disrupt the view of a bucolic hillside in England, their reflections of sky and telephone wire creating spatial voids in the unruly plant growth. This particular placement of the mirrors, and the placement of the camera lens, reveals the materiality of the mirrors as such—the views they reflect are entirely distinct from the rest of the photograph. Even as the mirrors appear foreign to the hillside, they provide an otherwise impossible three-dimensionality, expanding our perception of space beyond the confines of a mundane snapshot.

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