This is one of Robert’s most enigmatic images, created at art school as a study for his “Mirage” series. Art school had taught Robert to be suspicious of mass-consumed images, such as those found in ads and popular films, that may not deliver exactly what they promise. Robert exhibited several Pop Art treatments of mirages at this time. Among them was a drawing of a mirage that he projected as a slide on the gallery wall. Robert’s idea was to equate the medium of film with the illusion of a mirage. Both are fleeting visions of unreal things that inspire hope and desire in those who experience them.

This black and white study features a square-shaped screen surrounded by a field of diagonal marks, much as other images in the series picture island shapes surrounded by rippling waves. The alternating strokes, black on white and white on black, produce a sense of motion, the flicker of the projected image. A strip of film with island-shaped sprocket holes is positioned below the screen.