weekly photo challenge – scale

“There are two ways of spreading light:
to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
Edith Wharton

Sorry, I’m using my image from Pasaż Róży (‘passage of the Rose’) in Łódź, Poland … AGAIN, because in my book this is something in small scale that has become something big and spectacular, a living piece of art. And the story behind it so special too.

Joanna Rajkowska, the artist of the famous palm tree on the de Gaulle’s roundabout in Warsaw, in the realization of the project ‘passage of the Rose’. As part of the ‘Diamonds of Lodz’ action, the artist inlays the walls of the backyard at 3 Piotrkowska Street with a mosaic made of mirrors. Once, there used to be the first hotel of Lodz – ‘De Pologne’ (Polski Hotel), a 60 room hotel.

The 800m2 of the walls in the Polski Hotel’s courtyard has been meticulously covered with a mosaic of tiny pieces of broken mirrors. The repeated rosette pattern mimics the arrangement of the cells of the human retina. The ultimate result is a mesmerising fragmentation of the space.

In 2012 the artist’s little daughter, Rosa, became seriously ill with eye cancer and it was little Rosa’s fight through the illness and tough treatments that gave Joanna the idea to all this piece of art – she wanted the old building to see again – just like her little daughter.

The art was finished in May 2015 – and today the building got it’s life back – throught small businesses and tenants. And what I can understand is her little girl is okay today.