Self-Portraits with Mirrors

SELF-PORTRAIT, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1978
Black and white photograph created with 120 film, 20” x 20”, Artist’s Collection

The idea of hiding in order to reveal is a very old one known by all actors. In working on this exhibition, I invite my subjects to act. Does it reveal the truth? And if so, what is the truth? I can’t say. I can only say that there’s a certain elegance and sometimes pathos, that emanates from the person who wears the mask.

In this photo, the first actual self-portrait in this exhibition, I wear the smiling mask, and my image, shot with a twin-lens camera, doubles in the mirror. I become a twin of myself. In the background, the blurry sad mask hangs on the wall as if to say that I want my sadness far away. In truth, I am young with thick black curly hair and a trim body. And yet, the image is a fiction, as are all photographic images. The only reality is the feeling it engenders in the viewer, who, like myself, wants so much to believe that what they see is the truth.

SELF-PORTRAIT, New York City, 2024
Digital color print, 20” x 20”,
Artist’s Collection

I end with another self-portrait. It’s 2024 and I’m at home, looking in a mirror at my twin again. This time, the mask is sad. I wonder if it’s because I’m aging. Or if aging is just another pose, another role in my broad acting repertoire. My hair and body have changed, but my eyes are wide open, looking for something in the mask and the mirror. Maybe I’m looking for a bridge between past and present, then and now. Or maybe it’s a tunnel that transports me through the mirror to the other side of the mask.