In
2004, I visited the Tate Modern, in London and took this
picture. For his installation, “The Weather Project,”
Olafur Eliasson covered the ceiling with mirrors and placed
at one end, a half-circle of monofilament lamps, which
block out all colors of light except a warm, golden yellow.
The half-circle against the mirrors makes for a complete
circle—a permanent, blissful sun. The effect was
tremendous, even religious, the most successful
transformation of space that I have ever seen. People
immediately lay down to see themselves in the ceiling,
joining with their friends to make star shapes, or letters,
taking pictures of their reflected bodies. As wonderful as
it made you feel, I also couldn’t help thinking that it was
foreshadowing a creepy future. We might eventually have to
buy admission to these enormous sunrooms after our own had
burned away, or been covered by dust and nuclear filth. We
would make annual pilgrimages, like it was Disneyland. I
have so many other pictures of the work—light falling in
misty rays down onto a father taking his two daughters by
the hand, a woman standing in the light with her eyes
closed. To steal from Peter Schjeldahl’s review in
The New
Yorker, everyone was
seemingly “felled by bliss.”