Joanna McCarthy: Q&A
Fine-art and stock photographer Joanna McCarthy credits this photograph with helping start her career.It's an image notable for its mystery as well as its elegance. What exactly are we looking at here?
Not photographic trickery. There is no cloning, flopping or sandwiching. What you see is what Joanna saw in the viewfinder—and how she chose to compose the scene.
"It's a free-standing garden wall," she explains. "The reflecting pool is in the foreground. Behind the wall, and seen through the opening, is the garden and the bench—you don't see them in the reflection because of the distance. The horse is standing on a cement walkway in front of the wall."
Joanna took the picture in the late 1970s with an F3 and an 85mmf/1.4 Nikkor lens. The location is just outside Mexico City at a site designed by the landscape architect Luis Barragan.
While it's satisfying to know what's going on in the photograph,there is something to be said for mystery. Barragan, speaking on the art of seeing, put it this way: "It is essential to an architect to know how to see: I mean, to see in such a way that the vision is not over powered by rational analysis."
