Analysis: A Woman With A Mask

WOMEN WITH A MASK

The photo I have chosen is about the mask created by Nasir Mazhar, a young headwear designer and milliner.

The photo has been taken for a reportage entitled “Make me a Monster!” For this some top designers have been asked to make a mask from scraps. The photograph is a foreground of a woman with a mask made of white gauze. The mask she is wearing covers the whole face, you can only see the woman’s blue eyes. The hair is covered as well with white gauze stitched together so it suggests the shape of it. The hair mask is stitched to the face mask. The eyes, the eyebrows, the nose and the mouth are drawn on the face in an elementary way. The mask is full of marks from coffee, red lipstick and dust, some beads are applied

This photo has been taken in Paris during the fashion week in september, by Daniel Jackson, a fashion photographer who became first assistant to the photographer David Sims, after graduating from the Chelsea School of Art. He regularly shoots for magazines such as Vogue (America, China and Japan), Acne Paper and The New York Times magazine, and has shot campaigns for Louis Vuitton, Chanel and H&M.

Comparing from the reportage some of the masks created by other Designers like Roberto Cavalli, Alexander McQueen, Peter Pilotto and Walter Van Beirendonck, we can noticed that all of them represent women that are brutalized (see figure 3) and distorted (see figure 4) in their physical aspect, almost imprisoned and constrained (see figures 1 and 2) into something against their

From the earliest times, masks have been a mirror of world culture and tradition, they reflect the values of society. Humans have used masks for different reasons throughout time, during religious or magic rituals, for hunting, to frighten the enemy on the battlefield, to act in theatres, etc…

The symbolic representation of myths, dreams, fears and the supernatural helps to understand the attitudes, beliefs and the psychological complexities of humans.

Masks were invested with social meaning and they consolidated memory, experience, perception and emotion into a visual form.

The mask transforms and changes the appearance of a person by presenting an artificial or substitute face.

As the image and his creator want to communicate, wearing masks allowed people to cross class lines and behave even in inappropriate ways without fear of shame.

As societies’ morals and cultures have changed, wearing masks has become less suitable to the needs of the people and this is just turned into a carnival atmosphere (Venice Carnival, Rio Carnival, Halloween,