------------------------------------------------------------
Masks
Sabrina Jung
The art work masks deals with the terms of identity and gender, how they are staged and confimed as an image by the use of photography.
The materials are found photographs of unknown people. Female and male parts of faces are mixed up, as well as young and old parts of faces. The intention is to create a new face - beautiful or ugly.
All the portraits have been photographed in photo studios by professional photographers. Although most of the portraits are several decades old, they are still compareable to studio portraits nowadays. This you will recognise, if you recall today´s portraits you have seen in shop windows of photo studios. Only the design of the studio setting and the way identity is shown developed to a contemporary perception. It´s still a fact that identity is staged.
Therefore professional studio portraits are more a mirror image of a society at a certain time than a depiction of individual identity. All the portraits were kind of manufactured in the studios. Identity is formed by the photographer repeating an image again and again while using the same repertoire of requisites, poses and interior (see Multiples).
Mostly identity is created unconsciously but analog to the unspoken clichée of gender roles in the society. That´s why the portrait photo supports both the portrayed person´s idea of identity, which is created by the society, as well as the visual clichée of gender, which is confirmed by the process of repetition.
The method of collage is used to visualize the staging of identity and gender roles in the medium of photography. The work is in a radical way playful. It´s a „two-faced“ game with masks, which are at the same time protecting somebody and hiding something. This effect could be compared to the practicability of gender roles.
The work masks reflects on the one hand upon identity and on the other hand upon the medium of photography itself.
zurück