Mirror, mirrorRosslynd Piggott and Rudi Williams 

Interview:
Rosslynd Piggott and Rudi Williams 
In conversation with Sue Cramer


Melbourne, July 2024 

Picturing Devices



    • [Sue cramer]
Do you think mirrors and cameras are inherently related?

  • [Rosslynd Piggott]
Yes, both are viewing and viewers. Mirrors fleetingly whilst cameras capture.



Rosslynd Piggott, self-portrait in Garden fracture, mirror in vapour no.1, 2016. Wheel engraved glass, slumped and mirrored glass, cast Murano glass at I sense you, but I cannot see you - survey exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, 2019.


  • [RUDI WILLIAMS]
Yes, the logic of reflection is akin to the photographic because of the way light reflects off surfaces. Single lens reflex cameras have mirrors in the body of the camera to simulate a viewfinder. This is historically connected to the camera lucida, which was used to assist perspectival drawing in the early 19th century, perhaps earlier. The Daguerreotype, invented by Louis Daguerre in 1839, is one of the first forms of fixed imagery (or photography). In essence, it is a mirror—a polished silver plate sensitized with iodine and bromine and developed with mercury. It has been referred to as a mirror with a memory. 
  • The logic of mirroring, which involves the inversion of information, is carried through in photographic binaries such as black and white, positive and negative. This logic is difficult at times to teach because it appears to be contradictory, but once students understand how the discipline of photography is rooted in trickery, they begin to understand its language.



Rudi Williams, Vatican Museum, 2012-201 6. Becquerel daguerreotype (triptych I), acrylic, mild steel. Exhibited in Echo, 2016.