“What Icon?” is a sculptural mirror shaped like the silhouette of a DSLR camera—an icon widely used in smartphone apps, camera symbols, and “photography allowed” signage. Instantly recognizable yet rarely questioned, this familiar form is based on an actual photographic device, now obsolete to many.
The work invites viewers to confront that irony. Upon encountering it, most people instinctively photograph it—triggering a moment of realization: the act of taking a photo turns the camera-shaped mirror into a functioning “camera,” while simultaneously turning the photographer into the subject. In capturing the object, they capture themselves.
This double inversion—of function and authorship—highlights the shifting nature of photography in contemporary culture. Where we once looked through cameras to see the world, we now often look at symbols of cameras through screens, detached from presence or awareness.
By transforming a flattened icon into a reflective object, What Icon? collapses visual language, behavior, and identity into a single, self-aware encounter. The work poses a simple but urgent question:
In the age of ubiquitous imagery, what remains of the camera—and what remains of the photographer?
