Robert Landy, New York City

Oscar Wilde famously wrote: ‘Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.’

My intention in creating this exhibition is to ask questions I have asked throughout much of my life—Who am I? How do I become who I am? And finally, as I age—How do I face my mortality? These photographs provide some answers.

In 1975, I finished my doctoral studies in theatre and psychology. In 1975, I learned photography as a fine art. That same year, my theatre student showed me a plaster gauze mask he’d made on his face. Excited, I asked him to teach me how to do this. I made two: one with a slight smile, the other with a slight frown, a play on the classical forms of comedy and tragedy. I started photographing myself in these masks with my old twin-lens Rolleiflex camera. And then, aware that other artists create self-portraits in mask and mask-up, I made the leap to photographing family and friends wearing my masks.

In this exhibition, I paired a selection of the old black-and-white images from the mid- 1970s with new color digital images taken nearly 50 years later with my iPhone. For the new images, I created two new masks of my older face.

In many ways, creating this exhibition helps me respond to my life-long questions. I know more of myself through my art. I know who I am by taking on the roles of others who I am not—young children, old women, family members, friends, lovers, strangers. And I know that even if beauty is immortal, mortality is finite. The mask, sometimes associated with death, reminds us of this. However, although lifeless, it attains a surprising expressiveness and elegance. It demands attention as it freezes the face, as if to reveal the soul.

Looking at a mask of my face worn by others, then and now, is like looking in a mirror. The mirror reflects back to me who I am and who I will become as I age.