My inspiration for this project came from the artist David Sutherland (posted below) who did a project involving projecting one’s face onto sculptures or different people. They would makes faces or talk creating the illusion that whatever their faces were projected on were the bodies doing the talking. Obviously simply projecting one’s face on an object or someone else will be just the same as your own face, so there was distortion. The distortion, not the switching-faces novelty, intrigued me.

            I decided to overlay a face over another as he did but use a different medium, transparency paper. The transfer from 2D to 3D would have an element of distortion to it that light necessarily wouldn’t. Also, the ink would double the pigment of their skin creating a layer or mask of themselves that would augment, to the point of distortion, their natural skin tones and their eye color. The whole thing reminded me of those clear plastic masks with features painted on them that bank robbers use; not a full mask but somehow scarier by being close enough to a real face but completely un recognizable.

            I wanted some distortion, but I didn’t want a simple, flat mask. I took front and side photos of my friends’ faces and combined them in Photoshop to create a sort of 2-D panorama shot of their face from ear to ear. I then printed them on 8.5x11 laser printer transparencies.

At first I planned on making masks by punching holes and putting rub bands around it, but when I first had them put the transparencies up to their faces with their hands, the whole act clicked. Part of this project was about examining how we represent ourselves through photos in ID’s, mug shots, or on Facebook. We choose an image that we think most represents what we want ourselves to look like, so having the hands up there holding this image that doesn’t quite fit and actually distorts their real faces and selves under it made all of the sense in the world.

It was interesting for me to choose these shots, because the way the transparency lay over their faces not only distorted things, but also gave a range of emotions. It evokes for me also the expressiveness of our faces and how sensitive we art. By wiggling and mending a flat image I interpreted emotion where there was only the creases and bulges of bending plastic. I was committed to doing the five I picked, but I think it would be interesting to do these in 3 photo series, showing the distortions and “expressions” generated by these things moving around on the face. The expression thing is also particularly interesting in shots like those of Val and Leigh where their real expression bleeds through and contrasts with the one on the photo. Something else could be said about the truth of that, how a static image can never represent one part of the body, particularly the face all the time.

In writing and in photography everyone is a sucker for good details, and I think this picture has ‘em. From the positions and body language to the light and wrinkles, the whole thing makes one’s eyes linger.

This is a provocative image by Rosalind Solomon that puts in reference what I think I’m trying hit at with my project. The juxtaposition of the daughter and mother with the kneeling maid seems to evoke the break in reality many pictures and picture moments have. She talks about masks, too

“The idea of masking has always been prevalent in my work. I am always looking to find the innerness of the person who is before my camera. I am interested in the mask, but that is not what I am looking for. There are some people that it is impossible to unmask and those are not the people whom I most like to photograph.”

Antoine D’Agata is a portrait artist who uses arious techniques to distort his subjects such as ISO and motion blur.

Miami photographer Alfred Mandini runs Kendall Portraits, a professional portrait business renowned for their photoshopping skills, so much so as to claim to be “digital surgeons.” I couldn’t copy photos from the website for obvious reasons, but here is the link. http://kendallportraits.com/digital-surgery-miami-retouch-photographer/ 

I already did a dental photography link for one of the other projects, but it’s interesting to see these as portraits, especially since one’s dental records are the things people look at once the body has otherwise decomposed. 

This is a Houston artist named David Sutherland who uses a rig to project people’s faces onto sculptures or other people. I’m sort of taking this idea without using a projector, just transparencies that the subject of the photo will wear as a mask. 

http://www.instructables.com/id/Texas-Big-Face-3D-Face-Projection-How-To/