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.”

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