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a place and time of coming and going, approaching and leaving behind.
wishing peace, wisdom, and justice to all.
Sanaz Mazinani (b. Tehran, Iran, 1978). Threshold. 2015/2024
Acrylic mirror, silicone, wood, steel, paint, digital video & sound file.
Sound Composition by Mani Mazinani. Courtesy of the artist, Stephen Bulger Gallery, and Edward and Marla Schwartz.
“Mirrors are often regarded as offering a transparent and unbiased view of reality. In Threshold, mirrors are used to situate the viewer between reality and distorted images, encouraging self-reflection and self-awareness.
Sanaz Mazinani’s work uses intricate laser-cut mirror panels inspired by Islamic architecture. These mirrors reflect images of the viewer and intermingle them with video projections - a coming together within a fractured dimension. The video is created using multiple scenes of explosions taken from Hollywood movies, evoking Mazinani’s childhood experiences of war and conflict.
By mirroring and multiplying these scenes, Mazinani transforms the shocking explosions into kaleidoscopic compositions that captivate the visitor’s attention. Her artwork questions the over exposure and manipulation of conflict in the media industry and the distorted reality that these images create.
Sanaz Mazinani is an artist, academic, and educator based in Toronto. She works across the disciplines of photography, sculpture, and large-scale multimedia installations. Mazinani creates informational objects that invite us to rethink how we see. Her work has been shown internationally and is held in public collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Aga Khan Museum.”
A staircase bathed in golden reflections, a quiet tribute to symmetry, steel, and light. Beauty found in the geometry of descent.
Twilight bled across the sky like a slow wound, bruising the air in smoldering orange and amber. The hillside held its breath beneath creeping mist, its stones slick with memory and something colder—unspoken, unresolved. Each gust of wind dragged a groan from the staircase as if the path itself resented being walked again.
The castle loomed—not majestic, but accusatory. Its turrets clawed at the sky, black silhouettes trembling at the edges, refusing light. Windows stared like lidless eyes. The kind that watched, not welcomed.
Down the staircase, moss festered in the cracks, pulsing faintly in the gloom. What had once been passage now felt more like descent—each step shaped by burden and the whisper of warnings carved into stone.
Beyond, the forest twisted against itself, branches knotted in silent protest. A smell of iron and damp earth rose from its shadows, like the aftermath of ritual or ruin. Somewhere within, the air shifted. The kind of sound heard by bones, not ears.
And then—the hum. No longer imagined, but undeniable. Low and spectral, vibrating through rock and root alike. Not an invitation. Not a welcome. Just acknowledgment. As if the castle had noticed.
The dusk didn’t settle. It waited.
Another page in my artist’s book. Each standard in the book contains tracing paper with original, hand-written text, a film positive, and a traditional print.
Exploring Chowmahalla Palace in Hyderabad, India, there was this singular moment when nobody was walking the passage.
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a solitary figure dissolves into the sky—caught between structure and light, silence and ascension. the city falls away, and only motion remains.
The British Library of Political and Economic Science, otherwise known as the LSE Library, is steeped in history despite the architecture looking far ahead of its time. The century-old building was converted into a library by LSE in 1973 and redeveloped in 2000 by Foster and Partners. It is the world's largest social sciences library, with 50km of shelving and more than 4 million items housed around a light-filled atrium and a helical ramp. I was recently fortunate enough to be able to visit and shoot the location with fellow London photographer Peter Li, and my first shot was this look-up from the bottom of the atrium.
My main aim with this image was a high-key finish that would convey the minimal and futuristic aspects of the architecture. Shooting outside the university term and early in the morning meant the location was almost empty, and renovation work in the lower ground floor meant the glass lifts at the centre of the atrium remained unused long enough for me to capture both of them at ground level. While this would usually be an ideal opportunity to let the shutter speed run for longer, I opted for a higher ISO to control the glare of the bright lights surrounding the atrium, as I felt these had the potential to become garish if they were too large. I bracketed nine exposures, and these were later blended in Photoshop using luminosity masks. This made it possible to gradually raise the exposure of the midtones and shadows and create a clean high-key finish without overexposing the skylight or the dome, which both contain portions of my darker exposures.
With the exposures blended, I gently desaturated traces of yellow and orange and used Colour Balance, Colour Lookup and Gradient Map adjustments to shift towards a colder tone, which helped to emphasise the surfaces' pristine finish. There was a small amount of glare from the interior lights along the metal on the right lift, and as I felt the lifts in the foreground would be one of the first places that viewers' eyes would be drawn to, I wanted it to be clear of distractions, so the glare was removed along with the fire sprinklers dotted around the building.
Inside Nik's Silver Efex Pro, I increased the highlight structure to give the edges of the walkways more definition, as well as gently increasing the Dynamic Contrast, before setting the layer with these adjustments to the Luminosity blend mode to retain the original blue tones from my workflow. Using Colour Efex Pro, I then used small amounts of the Pro Contast, High Key and Glamour Glow filters to adjust the tonality across the image and to add a final bit of emphasis to the soft and airy atmosphere of the building.
The postprocessing phase for this image was straightforward, which I hoped would complement the location's streamlined design and the grace of its architecture. Watching students go back and forth through the building, I couldn't help feeling a little envious of anyone able to visit this awe-inspiring location as part of their research and learning.
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