LightBox- Artist Statment

Masks, by Jessica Barch. November 2015

The trigger and starting point for this piece were the articles printed in the 2014 Contact Photo Festival catalogue: Material Self: Performing the Other Within and In Character:
Self-Portrait of the Artist.  Both articles explain how photography is a way to capture the "expanding of identity into the realm of role-playing through self-portraiture"(In Character) and the "social and cultural construction of identity" (Material Self).  When I think of self identity I think of how in social situations we put on a facade that fits that specific situation, and how in each situation that facade changes.  When constructing the image above I wanted to try and capture the idea of picking and putting on a mask and how by picking a specific mask we are choosing how we want to be perceived. 

Functioning as a self portrait I have taken a series of images of different facial expressions and edited them to look like masks. By placing them in the background of the image it works as a wall that represents the facade we put up when we interact in a social situation. The central image has a face in order to emphasize the idea of the constructed identity, public and private personas. By being the central image its focuses on the the real me and the masks I choose to portray on a daily basis.