“Photographer in the Mirror” is a contribution to the anthology “Faces Between Fact and Fiction: Studies on Photographic Portraits in Norway”, ed. by Mikkel B. Tin, Novus Press - Oslo, 2019.

Containing both text and series of photographs, this chapter “combines a photographic project with reflections on photography. Taking her starting point in the photographer looking at herself in the mirror, she conciders a number of far-reaching questions: Does the mirror image convey her presence or her absence? Is the photographer she sees in the mirror a subject or an object? And how does the mirror image relate to the photographic portrait? Niether presence nor absence, it seems the portrait is appearance. The mirror, producing not only a physical reflection also prompts a philosophical reflection, which Pazdniakova developes with the help of phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Barthes), American pragmatism (Shusterman), and post-Marxism (Lefebvre), and, on the other hand, of two contemporary artists who thematize the photographic practice, Erwin Wurm and Crispin Gurholt. In fact, in order to understand what it is that appears in the photographic portrait, Pazdniakova launches her own photographic project. She invites real sitters to reflect her taking their pictures, as though they were mirror images of her: the photographer needs her sitters in order to become present in her absence, and the sitters who are present are no more than images of the asent one. It turns out there is no strict borderline to be drawn between original and imitation, appearance turns into simulacrum, the sitter into the apparition of a phantom. Midway between fact and fiction, the image opens boundless possibilities of image production”. Mikkel B. Tin, Inrtoduction, pp. 27-28.