The Reflective Reflex - My Current Photography Show
Well it is up! After a lot more preparation than I was expecting, I finally have my latest series of photographs hung and on display at the Mile Zero Coffee Company. For those that visited my show during the Fernwood Art Stroll, you will recognise a couple of the origin pieces for the series. That said, of the twelve images that I hung today, only three have been displayed previously, the rest are completely new and take the essence of those three images to a new level, or at least I think they do.
I really want to thank Brad Scissions at Mile Zero Coffee for letting me put up the show, as well as all the staff there as well. I also want to thank Lisa Jackson for getting me the space in the first place. Lisa is an amazing artist and she also curates the Mile Zero Gallery.
Rather than rattle on with something new, I am just going to reprint my Artist Statement for The Reflective Reflex below. I do hope that you can come down and enjoy the show at some point during the next month. The Cafe hours are available here. Also, while I am not doing a full evening opening, I am doing a mini-opening during the day on January 18, 2025 from 11am to 2pm. I will be there during those hours to walk you through the show. If you can’t make those hours for some reason, but you would really like me to walk you through at another point during the month, feel free to send me an email and we can see if we can work something out.
The Reflective Reflex
Thomas Guerrero 2025
This selection of images provides some snapshots of one of my favourite chimeras, reflection and shopping.
I love shops and stores and cafes and bistros. Of all of these, the best is a small, well curated shop. It might be a bookstore or a small grocer, what they sell is almost not the point, but instead that it is surprising to walk in and see what they have. One of my favourite things to do on a lunch break is to wander around the city streets looking for a store I haven’t been inside previously. Before I go in, I love to look into the shop’s window. A well-stocked shop window should not just provide you with a sense of what you might find inside, but also provide you with a story (hopefully funny) about the store and who works there. It should draw you inside with the hope of discovery.
Reflections are not anything to do with the store, in this instance at least, they are just a byproduct of the glass that makes up the storefront. But I do love reflections of all types and always have, whether it is the bathroom mirror or a completely flat rain puddle when the sun has pushed aside the laden clouds. They are the everyday portal into another dimension. Sometimes it is only a sliver and others it is all you can see. No matter how clear it is though, at the very least it is an inverted reality. More often though there is distortion, overlays and blurs caused by dirt, or wind or even imperfections in the glass itself.
Over the last few years when I would go out to take pictures, I would often find myself taking ones that piece together these two worlds, the shop window stage as created by the keeper, and the reflective world outside the store. They can sometimes tell a story about the store that you might not have thought about before, maybe where it sits in the city. Other times the store window becomes the palette to the outside world or the outside world colours the quiet storefront. No matter what, it is rare that I come back from a photo walk without some reflective picture and they are often my favourite ones of the day. It has become a reflex for me to see these other dimensions and I wanted to share a few of them here with you.
Thomas Guerrero has been taking pictures since he was first given a camera by his dad as a kid. This is his third show and first at the Mile Zero Cafe. With the exception of two in this collection all of these photos were taken on film. Thomas lives in Oaklands with his wife and three children. When he is not taking pictures, he is writing articles for his website, Sidewalking Victoria.
Walking in today, I wasn’t sure I was going to pull this off…