A bookmark has held a page in my copy of Small Myths by Mikiko Hara. It opens to a photograph where warm, blooming highlights envelop a woman and baby before a trifold mirror. The foreground is soft, almost dissolving, pushing the eye toward the reflection of their faces caught mid-action. The woman applies makeup. The baby surveys the contents of the box propping up the mirror. Neither acknowledges the viewer.
The colors feel warm and human. Nothing about the photograph is clinical. It feels as alive as the woman and baby, and as present as Mikiko Hara behind the camera. On the right side of the photograph, an abundance of light gathers, so bright that its vibrancy lingers on the inside of my eyelids. The blown highlights are less a flaw and more like atmosphere. They soften the scene. They make it welcoming.
It is as if we are backstage, watching a performance before the performance. The moment is unguarded, but still aware of itself. The woman’s focus rests on a compact mirror. She seems to hold her own perception in the palm of her hand. It is like Charles Horton Cooley’s concept of the looking-glass self, “I am not what I think I am and I am not what you think I am; I am what I think you think I am.” The view she has of herself is inaccessible to us. We cannot see the compact mirror. Instead, we see her reflection in the trifold mirror, staring intently at the smaller reflection withheld from us.
The woman’s attention suggests awareness. She prepares herself in a space that feels private, as if before the curtain rise. The baby, by contrast, does not appear concerned with reflection or presentation. Its focus is directed outward, absorbed by what is at hand. The baby does not seem to stand beside itself. It just occupies the moment.
The presence of the camera introduces another layer, but it does not change the overall condition. The baby has no awareness of the moment as a moment. It does not form an idea of itself being seen, or imagine how it appears from the outside. The woman does not have that option. She is already aware of herself before anyone is watching. The backstage is still a stage. The compact mirror, the trifold mirror, the camera. Each one is less a cause of that awareness than a product of it.
This is a contemporary condition. We choose which reflection to share and offer it as the real one. I am an artist. I am an activist. I am what I am willing to show, and you will know me as such. It is not wrong. It is the product of awareness within our times. The woman in the photograph reflects this. She is deciding, in private, who she will be when she is seen. The baby cannot do this yet. It has not learned to. That is what the image holds, and what makes it feel like something has already been lost.
“Woman and baby in mirror” is from Small Myths by Mikiko Hara. Published by Chose Commune in 2022.
Link to Mikiko Hara’s artist page on Chose Commune:
https://chosecommune.com/archives/artist/mikiko-hara
A Week With is a weekly writing series focused on a single image from my art and photobook library. I spend seven days returning to the image and write about what it brings into focus about culture and the present moment.
your writing, like your photographs, invaluable. thank you