Italian avant-garde artist Michelangelo Pistoletto embarked on his distinguished and celebrated ‘Mirror Paintings’ series in 1961. Executed on reflective surfaces of highly polished stainless steel, the mirror paintings typically incorporate a life-size photographic image of a figure into the work, allowing the artist to create an endless vacuum on the picture plane and to invite the viewer to become a participant in the work. Un Fotografo (A Photographer), 1962-80, contains a screen-printed image of a figure seen from behind at the moment of taking a photo, printed on the mirrored stainless steel ground. By depicting a photographer on the verge of capturing a photo, Pistoletto thrusts the unsuspecting viewer of this mirrored work into the picture plane, becoming the implied subject of the photographer’s aim. The prevalence of mirrors used for metaphoric and illusionistic purposes throughout art history – from Jan Van Eyck and Diego Velázquez to Édouard Manet – was of great interest to Pistoletto, however he inverts this trope by using the mirror itself as the picture, so that the work is only fully rendered, activated and interpreted upon the interaction of the viewer. It is this unique artistic language merging notions of reality, illusion and active participation that make this series one of the artist’s most profound creations.