Artefacts ofMetaphorical LightDario Borim Jr.Speechis one of the human actions that most often reacts to what we hear. We absorbthe worlds voices and respond to them with our lungs, tongues, teeth, lips andthe rest of our phonological system to create sounds and their linguisticsigns. When it comes to seeing, we have no specific reaction. We have nointernal system that draws any sketches or sends out any light back to theexternal world, in response to the light that reaches our eyes and the rest ofour physique. We do not produce or project light beyond the tiny confines ofour optical lenses. However, there is internal communication inside of us, ofcourse, from our eyes to our brains, and from that dialogue, among myriad otherdialogues within ourselves, there comes the chemistry of emotion, the power ofinspiration, and the magic of creation. While we see things, we also imagineand remember things. We build images outside ourselves. According Frenchthinker Jacques Derrida and Brazilian poet Silviano Santiago, our hands takethe charge of composing such images for example, by painting or by writingpoetry. Actually, our whole bodies sketch images through dance, music and othervisual and performing arts. With our neurons and the rest of an entireorchestra of thousands of instruments in harmony and synchrony within each ofus (a metaphor brilliantly sustained by Portuguese neuroscientist AntonioDamasio), we forge and foreground, l would say, artefacts of metaphoricallight. Reactingto what we see, and that may very well be what we seek (or imagine) to see, aswell as to what we think (visually or not), artists reproduce and transformwhat exists. So, with our hands, feet, or our bodies as a whole, we, humans actors, dancers, sculptors, writers, painters and photographers, in particular create or suggest what can, could or will exist. For some of us, painters,set designers and photographers, light is the most basic element to examine andto employ. It is no surprise that etymologically speaking, the wordphotography combines the Greek terms photoand graphe to mean nothing butdrawing with light. Light and color, light and movement, light and shadow these are definitely major dynamics that shape and reshape what we see and theimages we can create and disseminate through art. It is probably fair to inferthat the penchant for some sort of image creation is as old as the humancapacity to think abstractly and dates back to the days, when we still lived incaverns and had not invented the wheel or, of course, the camera, first builtby British scientist Fox Talbot, in 1839. For British art critic John Berger, whatserved the place of the photograph before the cameras invention, somethingeven older than engraving, drawing and painting, was reflection. (I must be avery primitive man, since reflection, as I will mention later, is one of myfavorite photographic subjects.) American writer and activist Susan Sontag is right when she argues that aphotograph is not just an image or an interpretation of the real, but somethingstenciled off the real, for which her metaphors are footprint and deathmask. Even though the human eye and the camera lens register images of anevent through their sensitivity to light, what the