In Islamic mysticism, Alam Al-Mithral describes a place where
images are real. It is the same place idealized by Plato and by
so many other ancient cultures before him. While the ancient
world left behind several artifacts (some of them monumental)
of this image-world, our modern world doesn't seem much
interested with the image world when their is so much to be
exploited in our material one.

Enter Kerstin zu Pan, a Berlin photographer whose images
belong somewhere in that space between reality and surreality.
You can't walk outside and find her forms standing around idyll
on a street corner, and yet one look at her images and its difficult
to shake the feeling that, yes, they are real. Or, at least, they should
be real. In fact, wishful thinking and wishful dreaming both seem to
be central to Pan’s work.

Like angels, nymphs and other life beings from the world of metaphors;
Kerstin’s ivory figures seem to walk right out of the secret wish-world
promised by ancient myths. In fact, it might be fair to say that, with her
camera, that is exactly what Kerstin is creating: wish-images that are
made real by either the wish or the mind or both.

Supervision is the name of her poetic series that features these
wish-images in a variety of dream poses. Poet Maya Angelou once
described a woman's hair as her crown. This anecdote takes on a
strange and beautiful new meaning when we are looking at the rainbow
crowns in all of the myth-women in Supervision. Every woman in
the series is ivory white, as if carved from the soft material of their
backdrops. The only hues are to be found in their hair, including the
full spectrum of hue-hairs between their legs. It's almost impossible
not to stare, and as you continue staring the reasons for doing so
continue to change.

One outlier stands out among Kerstin’s rainbow visions, not because
the image is her strongest, but because it stands closer to the shared
reality of our material world and body. "In Rainbows" captures an
ecstatic moment of a naturally flesh-toned woman inhaling the airs of
a real and natural background. It all seems real enough, until we realize
that the rainbow, which is image only, is refracting against her skin.
Maybe we are being told that this woman is an image that has only
temporarily stepped into our real world.