Connolly’s Mirror, Mirror confronts ageing through salon reflections

By James Calloway

Fall Line Press has recently published Pamela Landau Connolly’s Mirror, Mirror. The volume assembles colour portraits made with a view camera at one-fifteenth of a second.

Fall Line Press will host a bistro soirée and book signing during Paris Photo on Friday, November 13, 2026, from 6pm to 10pm. BISTRO 13, at 34 rue de las Glacière, 75013 Paris, will provide the setting.

The accompanying essay presents the portraits as worthy of museum display because they document a ritual rarely given sustained photographic attention. It also supplies the book’s critical frame.

What does the book photograph?

Connolly states: “Mirror, Mirror is a book about being looked at: by oneself, the camera, the photographer, the viewer, and a society that values youth above all.” Her subjects occupy a circle of women aged 45–65 who return to salons as dyed colour gives way to grey.

The project began from a recurring five-week rhythm. Hair colour returns to grey every five weeks or so, prompting a choice between renewed dyeing and accepting natural hair. Some women let their hair go grey yet still attend the salon.

During those appointments, Connolly covers their torsos with generic plastic capes. Hair sits between foil envelopes or beneath thick colour, leaving each woman to sit for hours before a large mirror.

That duration removes familiar cues of hairstyle and clothing. The accompanying essay describes identity as temporarily suspended before returning, stroke by stroke, as a self recalibrated in real time rather than restored to an earlier version.

Connolly photographs the women as they look directly and deeply at their reflections, not back at the photographer. She treats each gaze as unique and open to interpretation. She describes the portraits as frozen self-reflections, absent a sense of time.

How does the view camera shape the portraits?

Connolly uses a traditional view camera because its mechanics enforce a measured sequence of actions. She says: “The view camera I use insists on a long exposure—subjects must hold their breath and their gaze, suspended in the moment.” The final release of the shutter lasts one-fifteenth of a second.

She made the portraits on colour film to register differences in hair colour and skin tone. A larger film size and wide lens aperture produce, in Connolly’s account, a finely detailed but soft image with shallow depth of field.

Although she often meets a subject only minutes before the session, Connolly says intimacy and trust unfold quickly. She asks each woman to hold her breath and gaze, excluding the salon around them.

The resulting reflections remain suspended rather than staged as instant reactions. The camera therefore controls attention as carefully as the mirror redirects the women’s attention.

Why does the book open and fold like a salon ritual?

The soft-covered volume contains two hand-bound signatures, joined with thread resembling a slender hair tie. Several gatefolds appear as covers and operate as doors into concealed rituals. Opening them reveals subtly different portraits of the women in sequence.

Interspersed among the portraits are magnified strands of hair photographed in stark black and white. These images interrupt the aggressive chemical salon process and shift attention from manufactured colour to hair’s anatomical structure. The accompanying essay presents the pause as an encounter with grace and beauty.

This sequence gives the book a material logic beyond its succession of images. The fold makes viewing part of its subject; the hair study disrupts the expected portrait rhythm before the next subject resumes the longer transformation.

Where did the classical imagery begin?

Connolly first recognised the project in a salon reflection of a strong yet vulnerable woman. She compares that figure to a Roman bust from the third century BCE, grounding the book in classical sculpture while retaining the awkwardness of a contemporary colouring appointment.

Three women helped establish the work: Connolly’s hair colourist, her hairstylist and her first subject. After they supported her proposal to photograph women during hair colouring, the circle expanded. Connolly locates herself within this group, connecting her own ageing to the questions raised by her camera.

Her treatment of the sitters draws openly on Greek and Roman sculpture. Fabric draping, calm poses and the women’s presentation as strong, noble and beautiful establish dignity amid foils, capes and chemical mixtures. The accompanying essay characterises the portraits as classical in pose but modern in their honesty.

What institutional context surrounds Connolly?

Connolly has exhibited at the Ogden Museum in New Orleans, Foley Gallery in New York, Candela Gallery in Richmond, Kominek Gallery in Berlin and the National Portrait Gallery in London. Her photographs are held by Brown University, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and numerous private collections.

She was included on a shortlist of 20 photographers for the International BBA Awards Exhibition in Berlin and named a 2024 Critical Mass Top 50 finalist. Connolly describes herself as a lens-based artist, bookmaker and photo-object maker.

Her wider photographs centre on women, domestic spaces and children’s playthings, describing ageing and the passage of time. She also creates and curates Landau Gallery (@landaugallery), a miniature exhibition space devoted to photo-based art at 1:12 scale.

Her earlier books, Fly in Amber and Cabriole, belong to the Hirsch Library in Houston, the University of Michigan’s Art and Design Collection, the Beinecke Library at Yale and the Museum of Fine Arts at Harvard. Photographs from Mirror, Mirror have appeared in Slate Magazine, Lenscratch and All About Photo.com magazine.

The cover photograph, “Fanda Smoking,” was included in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Award Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts purchased the same print for its collection, linking award-exhibition visibility with collection ownership.

Connolly received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and an MFA in Photography from the Hartford Art School in Connecticut. She lives and works in New York’s Hudson Valley and publishes under the Instagram handle @pamconnollyphoto.

The next public test of the book’s argument arrives at Paris Photo. There, Fall Line Press’s 6pm–10pm signing places Connolly’s mirrors, gatefolds and black-and-white hair studies before the fair’s visitors.