The ability to recognize another person is something that often goes unquestioned. It’s just something that kind of happens, much like breathing or blinking. We don’t ask why these things happen, they just do. It’s an automatic response between the body and the brain. But what happens when we start to question our abilities as humans to see a face, remember it, and identify it again at a later point in time?

This series is an exploration of that very question. Upon exploring this idea further, I began to wonder about how much my subject’s facial features could be obscured while still maintaining their identity. The use of different mediums on each of my subject’s faces are intended to both partially conceal facial features and draw attention from the identity of the person in the photograph to the identification of each medium instead. My goal is to distract the viewer, drawing the eye around the image and causing them to bounce back and forth between the subject and the medium that rests on their face. The use of large format sheet film allows for more detail to show through, further drawing attention to the face of each and every subject.