Coelostat Mirror, Tamanrasset, Silvered

The flat mirror still sits in its cradle at the base of the heliostat tower, angled toward a window the sun hasn't entered in decades. I made this plate just before the afternoon light died — the collodion caught the silver-bloom on the mirror's surface, that particular oxidation that reads almost like a second sky pressed into the glass. Nothing here has been moved for this photograph.