I took this photo a few years back. It’s the cover image of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot as seen through a glass of water. I had just put the book down on my bedside table and was getting ready to go to sleep. I glanced over at the light and noticed the effect of the glass. Just a few days ago, when flipping through the book 50 Photographers You Should Know, I came across the entry on the Czech photographer Josef Sudek. Back at home I plugged the name into Google to see if I could find some more examples of his work and came across the image below.
The last image is a film still from Pedro Almodovar’s Flower of my Secret. A slightly different effect, but none the less interesting.
I’ve been trying to sort out what it is that intrigues me about these pictures besides there being a curious visual effect. I read over what I had written previously and sensed that there was something wanting…what’s the punchline? It has to do with the relationship between what we know of a subject and how it is represented visually, so that the image serves to represent more accurately what we know of the thing, the person or the event. In Almodovar’s image we see the two former lovers reflected in a collection of mirrors on the wall – their reflections fragmented in such a way so that they appear both together and apart. In my photograph the fragmented view seems more fitting a representation of Dostoevsky’s somewhat fragile and broken protagonist.
Edward Lewis 
