Martin Bruno's Psychedelic Photography in "Purpurea" Draws on Talbot and Huxley

French photographer Martin Bruno uses mirrors covered with colored gels to project reflected light onto fig leaves, succulents, stones, flowering grasses and shrubs, producing vaguely psychedelic chromatic effects that dematerialize his photographic subjects. The technique inverts the advice of William Henry Fox Talbot, who in The Pencil of Nature, the first photographic book published in London in 1844, recommended placing a white cloth beside a statue to reflect sunlight and cast soft illumination on areas that would otherwise fade into shadow. Where Talbot sought reflected light to heighten a subject's plasticity, Bruno seeks the opposite. In Purpurea, published as issue No. 32 of the series "Segnature," Bruno constructs a visual environment comparable to the one Aldous Huxley described in The Doors of Perception. The work is discussed by Aurelio Andrighetto and Anita Romanello in a text dated Wednesday, 23 September 2026 at 03:00, published by Doppiozero.