Windows to the Soul (Iris)



Dance the wheels of lives infinitely nuanced, lose yourself in the iridescent filaments of incandescent reds and ocean blues, burn with a fierce fire, its multi-coloured, liquid flames flowing into the obscurity of uncharted territory. Then look again carefully and pass through to the other side, beyond reflection and appearance, to hear the enigmatic silence of the soul.

What can we learn from these strange spheres, at once exposed and secret? What do these human irises have to tell us - captured, formatted, and presented in fresh guise by the artist? They sing a song of arid lands and extinguished suns, a song that tells of the crevasses and riches of an imaginary world. They also speak of the depths of the unconscious, and of the singularity and universality of being. Their gaze turns inwards yet also rests on the immensity of the Universe in a return to the fundamental and an invitation to dream the impossible.

In his Windows to the Soul project Belgian photographer Edouard Janssens ushers us into another dimension, pulling off an aesthetic and technical coup simultaneously. These very high definition close-ups were taken at a distance of 33 centimetres so as to better grasp the magic of the eye, extract it from reality, and efface any reflections – all without betraying the photographic act in any way. The only artifice used by the artist was to re-calibrate and re-centre each iris for perfection’s sake.

The works comprising the Windows to the Soul series are meaningful both in their uniqueness and in the multiple perceptions they return to us, like so many reflections of our individual identities and of the beauty common to all humanity.

View the iris gallery.


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