Visitation Scenes

These photographs are of people wearing photographic masks of my family members (most of whom are deceased). When looking at these images it should be kept in mind that the photographs were taken in the exact places where these family members lived, worked, or passed through. So in effect, the work is about people from the past in places they would remember. Themes of alienation and displacement are prominent; these people no longer belong in these places or times. I developed the photographic mask technique 30 years ago and have completed 5 bodies of work using this method. In previous work, people have worn photographic masks of my face, or the faces of dolls or other people. In this series, I created the photographic masks from the faces in an archive of old family photographs. When worn, the masks create the effect of these family members coming back to life in a ghostly, surreal way. The participants who wore the masks were either myself, members of my living family, or people who lived or were visiting the places being photographed. There is only one mask for each family member; so across the series, the masks move through place and time, but the expressions on the masks, and the age the subjects when they were photographed, cannot change. These are photographic traces of these people’s existence, in many cases the only image available. I used a “straight” / “snapshot” approach to the subject matter. I avoided imbuing the images with feelings such as loss or mourning. I wanted to simply describe things. This “clinical” approach fits with my practice as a psychiatrist, where I need to keep a neutral eye on a situation, even if there is a lot of emotion in the air. In my psychiatric practice, I take the stance that one should tolerate the fact that one cannot be sure of the truth of things. Similarly, in my photographic practice, I use the masks as a device to unsettle the viewer, to emphasize that one cannot be sure what is going on and that there is a lot of information missing. Finally, there is a disorientating atmosphere in these images where time is being distorted. This is a deliberate approach that counters the idea of a photograph being a record of a moment.