By David Van Eyssen

Don't You Wish You Were On The Other Side of The Glass is a selection of photographs of the witnessing self, taken over a two year period in London and Los Angeles.

I wanted this series of pictures to act as bridge between street photography and self portraiture.

Finding the glass is a meditation in itself, but I don’t search. I find the shots as I walk. Because I’m taking pictures into windows, light is everything — on me, what’s behind the glass, and the street behind me.

There can be several separate lighting environments in a single photograph, so timing is critical. Traffic and pedestrians are another factor — whether to include them has as much to do with tone as composition, although in these pictures, they’re almost the same thing.

For many of the images, I’m looking for ways to block or erase parts of my face and body because I want to move away from conventional self-portraiture as much as possible, and because I’m interested in the transformation of the self, and how to communicate that visually. The window surface, and how light strikes it, is key to this, and so the texture of the glass is important — how clean or weathered it is, or whether it’s been graffitied on.

In other images, while there's usually some distortion of the face or figure — even the appearance of amputation in some cases — it’s more about the space, and where the subject stands in it. That tells us something else about the figure — how present or distant it is.

Reflecting the street into the area behind the window creates a liminal space, and the entire image becomes the subject. I think of these photographs as containing a figure, not self-portraits that make the figure the subject.

I’m always asking questions when I work. Where does the figure belong in relation to the rest of the objects in the frame, and to the window itself? Is the reflection ambiguous — does it ask the viewer to query the position of the subject? Does the image make us ask what is on the inside looking out, or on the outside looking in, and where that dividing line is? When I’m taking a picture, I work with the same cues we look for unconsciously in everyday life to tell us what's real or not.

I look at the glass pane as a virtual object, with magical properties. That’s the way mirrors were used in sacred rituals — as portals that held parallel worlds. To me, glass is perfect technology that, in the right light, makes us question reality.

See the collection here.

David Van Eyssen is a multimedia artist whose work reflects his fascination with time, memory, and the beauty of impermanence. Originally from London, he started as a painter and installation artist, later expanding his creative journey to Los Angeles, where he made a name for himself in entertainment and advertising. His art practice combines his painterly instincts with his experience in filmmaking to create video-based work, site-specific projections, virtual and extended reality pieces, AI-infused photography, lenticular images, and 2.5D prints.

In his art, memory and impermanence intersect, inviting viewers to see transformation rather than loss. Through self-portraits that obscure his presence, videos that merge and reverse years of imagery, and lenticular pieces that compress time, David explores what he calls the “sensation of personal impermanence” — a poetic look at how time and identity can vanish yet continue to transform.

David's creative journey began early — he exhibited at Goldsmiths College of Art at just 14, two years after building his first personal computer. His work now resides in private collections across the U.S. and Europe, with support from technology sponsors like Varjo, LG Electronics, and Panasonic.

Read our interview with David Van Eyssen to learn more about his art, creative process, and inspirations.