Photo of the Week #393

March 16, 2026
Everything in this photo feels familiar, yet nothing is quite where or what you expect. At the top, a powder-blue beam looks like a clear sky until you notice the steel rivets. Things only get slipperier as the composition tumbles downward—there's a pleasing funhouse quality to the way that things are endlessly reflected and spatially unmoored.

Toshio Shibata's photos of hydraulic engineering projects have often described a graceful equipoise, as we see the great forces of water, steel, and concrete achieving a finely tuned balance. Here he dives deeper into his process of abstraction. He seems to have taken all these elemental components and reshuffled the deck, until steel feels like air, and concrete can interleave water, all with a dancing lightness. Like a great magic trick, knowing how it’s done doesn’t make the illusion any less satisfying.