Steffi and Gunther, Weilin and Mackey

STEFFI AND GUNTHER, Montabaur, Germany, 1976
Black and white photograph created with 120 film, 20” x 20”, Artist’s Collection

Steffi and Gunther, Uta’s parents, were my German in-laws. They fully participated in the mask-making and modeling. Looking at the photograph, I first mistake them for myself, and then for my parents. They’re quite affectionate, and seeing this, I feel the absence of my mother. Gunther loved to engage in intense philosophical and political conversations. As I do. My father was a sweet man who avoided such conversations. I taught Gunther how to make a mask of his own face. He gave it to me. I wore it occasionally and photographed others in it. I cannot imagine ever wearing a mask of my father’s face. I miss him.

WEILIN AND MACKEY, Long Island City, New York, 2023
Digital color print, 20” x 20”,
Artist’s Collection

Although they married several months earlier, I photographed my son Mackey and his wife Weilin in their wedding clothes to accompany the masks. Like Gunther and Steffi, they’re affectionate with one another. Mackey wears the frowning mask. However, I recently told him that when I see him smiling, it is like looking in a mirror. Weilin calls me Dad, and I can hear her say those words as I look into her smiling mask. There’s a mirror with no reflection in the background, and a bouquet of wilting flowers. Although unseen, I’m in the mirror as the photographer and as the Dad. I cherish both roles. The wilting flowers remind me that all of these images are about the passing of time and the wilting and resurrecting of people within their environments. Steffi and Gunther are deceased. Mackey and Weilin, a marriage of East and West, are embarked upon a new life. The masks easily travel the distance of 50 years, and hold the contradictions together.