The Familiar Made Strange

"The notion of 'making the familiar strange, and the strange familiar' is now a recurrent feature of artistic and photographic manifestos and of creative 'brainstorming' sessions in many fields. The phrase itself has been attributed to the German poet Novalis (1772-1801, aka Friedrich von Hardenberg), who declared that the essence of romanticism was 'to make the familiar strange, and the strange familiar'. The concept is found amongst other Romantic theorists such as Wordsworth and Coleridge." (Semiotics for Beginners)

Take the water, for example, pouring into under the little wooden footbridge at Lake Cheston's beach. Every day, I walk over this bridge. Every day, I see this water. Every day, I stop on the bridge to look more closely at that water. But today, I saw something strange: the water became marble and light reflected off its surface, and I saw the deep mottled marble and metallic glint of Bernini's Cornaro Chapel in Rome.

Here, let me show you what I saw with my eyes.

Here, let me show you what I saw with my mind's eye.