The Photographer's Reflection

This photograph was created from the balcony of my hotel in Granada in 2014.

I had been watching people walk through the streets below when I noticed polished metal spheres positioned at both ends of the balcony.

What first caught my attention was the light reflecting from one of them.

The sphere contained a curved version of the city, the architecture, the sky, and inevitably me.

For a moment, I wondered whether I could photograph the world reflected in it without appearing inside the image.

I could not.

Then I understood that my presence was not a distraction.

It confirmed that I had been there.

Looking back, I realize I was not photographing my reflection.

I was photographing the moment curiosity looked back at itself.

Throughout the permanent collection, the artist often remains invisible.

His presence is known through the moments he chooses to preserve.

Here, photographer and photograph occupy the same frame.

The sphere reshapes the world around it while revealing the observer who brought that world into the Museum.

While watching the street from a Granada hotel balcony, the artist noticed the extraordinary brightness of a decorative metal sphere.

The photograph was completely unplanned.

Its curved surface reflected the balcony, city, sunset, architecture, and photographer as one visual environment.

The unavoidable self-portrait became evidence of presence and a fitting record of the curiosity connecting the artist's many travels.

We spend our lives believing we are observing the world.

Occasionally, the world quietly reflects us back.

Every road traveled.

Every city explored.

Every stranger remembered.

Every unexpected discovery.

Perhaps the greatest journey is not discovering new places.

Perhaps it is discovering the person who returned from them.

Preserved as the thirtieth accessioned photograph in the Francisco Colón Studio Photography Wing, The Photographer's Reflection places the observer visibly within the collection and serves as a meditation on curiosity, presence, and the act of seeing.