About The Project

While visiting Portland, Oregon in the summer of 2011, I became consciously aware of the incredibly beautiful abstract patterns reflected in the windows of the downtown. As I began to photograph these images, I found myself composing what appeared to be paintings. My initial awareness turned into an excitement and a passion for exploring more opportunities to capture this abstract art. I started to associate to the way metal and glass, like structure and openness, represent the tension between elements in modern architecture. While the metal framework demands conformity, the glass reflections seem to explode, almost in defiance of this structure and, in the end, seem to transcend their captors.

We can try to look directly at the world and never truly see it. Reality, without intention, is inevitably distorted through the lens of our personal histories. It is like light on a window, deforming the objects it is reflecting. Although never fully, objectively real, there are elements of reality most of us could agree on and that is why fragments of objects (a fluorescent light shining in a window, a car parked on a rooftop garage, or a rivet driven into steel) remain in these images as illustrations of how we see what’s in front of us.

The City Reflections Project, through its imagery of colors, shapes and patterns, represents the way we place discordant pieces of our lives in proximity to each other, deconstruct the whole of an experience, embellish, elaborate and abstract the simple, plain and ordinary truth that is life.

Words and images courtesy of Andrea Stone