Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

A rainbow (Zero dimensions since it's not a thing but an effect?)

A reflection in a mirror (2D? 0D?)

Full-frontal nudity (3D)

For all practical purposes: the moon.

I am a teacher so it makes me think of drawings completed by students. I work a lot with my students online so it also brings to mind the fact that anything produced on a screen cannot be photographed from anywhere except the front.

My first thought, along the lines of the mirror above, was a projected image on a screen, which is... 2D? I've forgotten all my topography.

We seem to be shooting at a class of things, though, that can't be photographed from behind simply because they are set against an opaque backdrop. The added trick of optical reflection adds a little more weight to these ideas, but it's still unsatisfying. After all, frontal nudity and mirror images, if not for the opaque object behind them, could be photographed; they would just look different than they do from the front. But the same is true for any object.

The rainbow is clever because its presence is undetectable from behind (or at least it is displaced).

How about a black hole? A wormhole? An object travelling at near-light speed, which would be nearly invisible from behind but very bright from in front?

A loving gaze or a nasty facial expression. I guess this could include eye contact of any kind.

A bas relief sculpture.

The Sun!
The Moon!
A piece of bread!

The first reflection of the camera taking a photograph of itself in a planar mirror.

I reckon the reflection occupies no real dimensions since it is a virtual 3D image of a real 3D object. It's just light rays...

A vampire. Oh, wait. That's not right.

Hey, who are you? Aaahhhh....

A wink.

The Chagall stained glass window by the staircase of the Art Institute of Chicago with the early morning sun behind it.

The present.

That's if we agree that the present is virtually "in front" of you.

To image it from "behind," we'd have to travel to the past. From the "top down," we'd have to be in one of the higher order dimensions.

Three spatial dimensions, naturally, though your photograph is essentially only two dimensional.