Nathan Mooij has a thing for eyes. Not strange for a photographer, but his specialism does lead to unusual things. Starting from the rather clichéd idea that eyes are the mirror of the soul, he set out to find out what, how and why exactly that works. Namely, there is something going on with our right and left hemispheres of the brain and how they determine our view of the world.
On Thursday 14 February, an exhibition of his latest work opened at Museum CODA in Apeldoorn. I went to take a look and spoke to Nathan Mooij, about the thoughts behind his work.
Also speaking is Marco Kuijpers, the man who uses Photoshop to turn Mooijs' mirrored portraits into something very special. After all, the principle seems simple. Photograph someone's right-hand side of the face, mirror it and turn it into one face again. Nathan Mooij did not use that simple trick. After all, he was not interested in the face, but only in the eyes. Therefore, in the portraits, only the eye was always copied and pasted into the other half of the face. This produces an often subtle but unmistakable effect. Two different faces, while only the eye is always different.
Photoshopper Marco Kuijpers explains that process well: 'Not the eyebrows, not the bags, but exclusively the eyes I cut out and pasted them on the other side. In the process, the lighting also had to be adjusted.'
Good to knowThe exhibition can still be seen until 2 June at CODA in Apeldoorn.
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