As the education of a photographer continues - early in September 2020 I enrolled in an online continuing education class at the SVA. The course title: Photography in Pandemic Times, instructed by Elinor Carucci. It was great to be in a class with other photographers whose experience was at all different levels. The technical part really didn’t matter much, as it was about documenting what we were experiencing. Many in this class were physically displaced from what was more familiar - but had an advantage to move to a less densely populated location.

For me, the locations were the same - but level of fear, anxiety and uncertainty very high - certainly, a shared concern. To connect with a class on a weekly basis helped anchor my wavering mental health and actively engage in the creative exploration of distance and isolation.

Fashion, Beauty, Charm is one of the series I developed during this class.

I had been buying several different types of face masks and neck gaiters - I needed a lot for work, and bike riding, so I’d be washing them all time. Many of the gaiters were a bit cheap, and didn’t install any confidence they would be that effective. I took them to my studio and decided to take a series of self portraits, but with the intention of distance and obscurity. 

To me this felt like how things were going - I don’t know what you look like, and you don’t know what I look like.

Since the material was stretchy I could put ping pong balls and Halloween masks from the dollar store under the stretchy fabric - I’d look all lumpy or skull face head - to further amplify (or complete) this new level of visual strangeness. 

Perhaps there is a level of identity because of the lack of identity, all that’s left is the ‘uniform’ - the ‘what’s left’ with the visual evaluation. When I’d take my photo students on field trips in town we’d crack up at the shop mannequins - basically the ones that were body form without a head.

Some of these images remind me of that visual - part clothes ad or shop mannequin. With this project, the only planned part was color matching. I did pay attention to which colors fit together well and in the studio all the photographs were taken with natural light.