Joel-Peter Witkin, Arms Broken By Windows, 1980
I thought these masks would be very relevant to my work, they are very definitely gendered masks, particularly the ones I bought. They, like the mask in Witkin's photo, only cover the eyes of the person wearing them. I have taken a few experimental photos of them, using the notion of the person underneath having expressions that match society's impressions of traits of the opposite gender.
But when I took images of these masks in the same setting I had been photographing my other work in I realized that they didn't work as well as I had hoped.
The subject, when wearing the masks in my previous works, have their eyes covered. This wasn't an issue in these works as their eyes were covered with other images of eyes but the eyes on the Victorian masks have holes over where the pupils and part of the iris should be. This makes the images I am creating look hollow and empty, as the eyes aren't really there, thus making the images less powerful as artworks. I have, therefore, for the moment, decided not to use these masks in my work, although I may come back to them at a later time.
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