Street photography has always been my playground for experimenting, but “Grad u zrcalu” (City in a Mirror) is a project where I went a step beyond classic framing. It's a black-and-white photo collection about symmetry in urban space, without a single Photoshop trick. All the symmetry happens physically, at the moment of shooting, with an ordinary mirror.

An idea born from a MoMA mix-up

I found the inspiration in a well-known story from the art world. At the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Dutch artist Piet Mondrian's painting “New York City I” was hung upside down for years without anyone noticing. That anecdote made me think about how subjective our sense of the “right” way up really is. I decided to make a series of photos that work just as well when you turn them upside down, so the viewer decides which side looks right.

A mirror instead of Photoshop

The whole concept is deliberately low-tech. Instead of creating symmetry afterwards in editing software, I use an ordinary mirror while shooting, placed so it duplicates part of the architecture and creates a new, imaginary building or scene. Afterwards the photos only get colour correction in Lightroom, with no manipulation of the content. I shot on a Nikon D5300, and the biggest challenge wasn't the gear but the patience to find the angle where the mirror creates a convincing illusion.

The viewer decides which way is up

What I love most about this project is that every photo has two equally valid versions. When you turn a shot upside down, the composition doesn't fall apart, it simply becomes a different photo, just as readable and just as “correct”. I deliberately leave that choice open to audiences at exhibitions and on Behance, because I don't think a photo has to have only one right way to look at it. That idea has also taught me the most about thinking differently about composition when I work for clients, not just for myself.