IN THE MIRROR

It is a primal human wish and need to look at others and, once, to see oneself as well. Man first saw himself in water, in still water, and then he polished stone, copper, bronze. The clouded image opened the door to all kinds of beliefs — beginning with the belief that a mirror can steal and imprison the soul, that it can lead you into another world… The story of the mirror in the history of the human race begins somewhere in Anatolia six thousand years ago, then in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The ancient Greeks and Romans looked at themselves too, but not all of them, since the mirror was a privilege of the rich. So it was in the Middle Ages as well, when mirrors were first made of glass. In the age of the Renaissance and the Baroque, Venice led the making of luxurious mirrors backed with mercury and tin. In that Venice, giving away the secret recipe for preparing a mirror was paid for with your head. In more recent times, in the nineteenth century, the German chemist Justus von Liebig perfected the technique of coating glass with a layer of silver by chemical reduction, which made possible the mass production of cheaper and better mirrors.

Alongside classical mirrors, so-called smart mirrors are now widely produced, with built-in screens, sensors and interactive functions. And man did not stop there: he played with his own skill and knowledge and made the distorting mirror. So that, unlike the frightened man at the beginning of this story, he might laugh at himself and at others.