Baudelaire's Brow:
Reflections on the Photographs of
Karin Rosenthal

One thing I like to do when looking at photographs is to stare them down until something inside the image begins to move. The first time I attempted this act of animation was at the George Eastman House many afternoons ago where on display was Etienne Carjat's meticulously focused portrait of Charles Baudelaire. You may need to have the image in front of you – the famous portrait is published most everywhere – to imagine what I encountered on the oily, rippled brow of the sometimes irascible poet. After three minutes of unflinching eyeball-to-eyeball contact, I began to notice – honest to God - building up on his forehead, giant beads of sweat! I had won the staring contest.

For some reason, maybe because of the sweeping perfection of the photograph, we, as human mortals, need to disprove the fact, bring the image down to ordinary dimensions. Or maybe it's just the result of the mesmerizing, almost hypnotic attributes in Karin Rosenthal's images

The photographs of Karin Rosenthal can charm and tease our imaginations in much the same way. Only here it is with the reflections of the body in the water that I play this mental game. Knowing the image is a still photograph and cannot possibly move is what compels this urge to create a disturbance. For some reason, maybe because of the sweeping perfection of the photograph, we, as human mortals, need to disprove the fact, bring the image down to ordinary dimensions. Or maybe it's just the result of the mesmerizing, almost hynoptic attributes in Karin Rosenthal's images. In any case, I accomplish the breakup of the photograph by imagining a gentle breeze that fans across the water, or if that doesn't work, dropping in a stone to ripple away for the moment the integrity of the reflection.

I have an answer for what this provocation against the permanence of the image might signify. Could it be that reflections intimate the unknown, provide tangible proof of the existence of the intangible?

What Karin Rosenthal offers, through her mind's eye and that of the camera, are wonderfully inventive and life-affirming strategies for contemplating our significance in the continuity of existence.

To test this idea, do as I do, disrupt the mirrored image, drop in your own pebble. For a few moments everything changes, tonalities and focus lines run helter-skelter, nothing makes sense. Like Peter Pan chasing his shadow, the former image is only half there. Everything is oscillating wildly now. But soon, all the commotion slows down. The reflection begins reshaping itself. Moments later, everything is back in place. Nothing moves. The photograph has returned. The beauty of its elegant orchestration is firm once again, ready for the next stone to drop. lnterpretation? What was before us in this world will surely be there after we are gone. We are the disruption of the reflection; our lives are but a marvelous agitation in the short span of time we have on earth. if that is one premise behind these astonishing human sand castles transfigured in their liquid mirrors, then I think I know what Karin Rosenthal may be up to. That she would utilize the human form reflected in the water as the primary substance of her photographs comes as no surprise. The body is, after all, the container of the mind. What Karin Rosenthal offers, through her mind's eye and that of the camera, are wonderfully inventive and life-affirming strategies for contemplating our significance in the continuity of existence.

As Baudelaire wipes off his brow – and lets drop the next pebble, a bead of sweat.