“.
Time for another dip into Robert E. Jackson’s fabulous collection of vintage snapshots. The muses called, and Robert responded with an album he calls Women in Mirrors. The women pose. The mirror shows. The photographer is hidden.
As ever, let’s try to imagine the stories between the images.
“You can’t go through the looking-glass without cutting yourself.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine
“The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome.”
― Derek Walcott, Sea Grapes
Mirror in the bathroom
Please talk free
The door is locked
Just you and me
– Mirror in the Bathroom by The Beat
“To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said ‘I’ve a sceptre in hand, I’ve a crown on my head. Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be, Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me.”
— Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass
“She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
“The curse is come upon me,” cried
The Lady of Shalott.”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott
I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know
I’ll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you’re home
– I’ll Be Your Mirror by The Velvet Underground and Nico
“How frail the human heart must be―a mirrored pool of thought.”
― Sylvia Plath, Letters Home
“Here is a list of terrible things,
The jaws of sharks, a vultures wings
The rabid bite of the dogs of war,
The voice of one who went before,
But most of all the mirror’s gaze,
Which counts us out our numbered days.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War
“He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know who reflected your own light to you? People were more often–he searched for a simile, found one in his work–torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people’s faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Through the mirror of my mind
Time after time
I see reflections of you and me
Reflections of
The way life used to be
Reflections of
The love you took from me
– Reflections by The Supremes
“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
“Why shouldn’t I hate her? She did the worst thing to me that anyone can do to anyone else. Let them believe that they’re loved and wanted and then show them that it’s all a sham.”
— Agatha Christie, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
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