Black & White - Masks, Rites and Transformations III

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another

William Shakespeare.



Elliot Erwitt, Kent, England, 1968

Japanese animal masks

Children in the industrialized world are surrounded by animal
imagery: toys, cartoons, pictures, ...

... decorations of every sort. No other source of imagery can begin to compete with that of animals. The apparently spontaneous interest that children have in animals might lead one to suppose that this has always been the case…. Yet it was not until the nineteenth century that reproductions of animals became a regular part of the décor of middle class childhoods
John Berger, Why Look at Animals, 1980

Black & White - Masks, Rites and Transformations II (The artists)

I like contradictions. We have never attained the infinite variety and contradictions that exist in nature. Tomorrow I shall contradict myself.
That is the one way I have of asserting my liberty, the real liberty
one does not find as a member of society.

Man Ray



Kati Horna, Remedios Varo, wearing a mask made by Leonora Carrington, 1957

Black & White - Masks, Rites and Transformations I

All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks
in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity

Friedrich Nietzsche



Irving Penn, Three Asaro Mud Men, New Guinea, 1970