Dissimulation
Work in Progress
Humans have been wearing masks for millennia and they are deeply routed in our primal psyche. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and martial purposes. Masks rituals occur throughout the world and seem to share numerous characteristics. The function of the masks may be magical or religious or folk laws.
All over the world Masks have been used to help mediate with spirits or the underworld. It has been suggested that ritual masks, as representations of the human face, are extremely revealing of the two fundamental aspects of the human psychological condition. Firstly, the repression of a cooperative, instinctive self or soul and secondly, the extremely angry state of the unjustly condemned conscious.
This project was conceived when I was given 40 hand made masks. I believe as a human species we have a deep human connection of imagination and fear. All of these masks seemed to have some type of human or animal subconscious mythological correlation from our primal ancestry. The idea of this project is for the model to choose one mask which they feel represents them, or a mask they have an unconscious connection too. Once the mask has been chosen it is then removed from any further photo-shoots. The act of being Anonymous yet portraying your, self through a mask which you have chosen, raising many questions about being human.
