Research / Inspiration

I explored ideas I could think of to emulate Arbus' work. ‘Beauty in imperfection’ is one of the main undertones of her work. I played with this idea.

Masks cover imperfections - a facade - create a new persona - or cover one up

If you cover a face - outfit/surroundings becomes the identity - who’s to say you are otherwise

. I first thought about drawing say an eye or your mouth on the hand of the model and covering that part with them but this seemed too childish. I then thought about the use of a mask. Then came my initial idea; poses of people that are on the sidelines of society now. I.e. politicians, bankers, terrorists. Covering their face with a mask and possibly using the same model, just changing the outfits obviously. Further discussion of this idea saw it seem far too complicated but the mask idea was definitely interesting enough to run with. So I explored flickr for inspiration...  

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 I came across a set with one girl and the same bunny mask in different situation. There was another set with these masks which had an alice in wonderland theme with cards and bright outfits, a magical other worldy theme. I thought about identity and the use of masks and came to the conclusion the easiest thing was to use people of my own age. Keeping with the mask idea. And projecting an image over them that’s linked into there lives. Like Alice in Wonderland, you ahve to decided if this is really there identity. Taking away there face shows us that we have to base our assumptions of people and our prejudice's on the interests. Only are they real?