Water Mirror-B

Water Mirror-B, created in 1981 as edition 41 of 50, depicts a body of water so still that its surface functions as a reflective plane, doubling the sky and surrounding landscape in a shimmering inversion. The mirror metaphor transforms the water surface from a barrier into a window, and Iwami exploits this perceptual ambiguity to create a composition where up and down, real and reflected, become difficult to distinguish. The "B" designation pairs this print with a companion Water Mirror-A, and the two together likely explore different conditions of reflection, perhaps varying in the clarity of the mirrored image, the color temperature of the reflected light, or the degree to which ripples disrupt the perfect doubling. Iwami's woodblock technique layers translucent washes of color to build the reflective effect, using the paper's white ground to generate luminosity from within the image.