German Avagyan:
Mask is intended to conceal the true face.
People “wear mask” to protect themselves from stresses in their everyday life, and, as far as they believe, to guard their “inner world” from intrusions from the outside.
Sometimes it is difficult for a photographer to make a good portrait, to “take off” a mask from people who cover their “true” identity.
At the same time, a photographer, taking picture of a person, “adjusts” himself to him or her, putting on a mask. In this way a photographer tries to reveal his hero, making him or her feel free and easy.
In this project I have tried to, figuratively speaking, unmask my heroes, creating on the shooting site atmosphere, favorable for ingenious intercommunication, by giving into their hands.…my mask. The mask my heroes are posing with was made by casting my face with gypsum with subsequent making of my own papier-mâché mask. To express it figuratively, having taken of the mask from my own face, I have tried to take off the masks from my models, giving my mask in their hands.
Holding my papier-mâché mask, people were transformed before the camera. Everyone played his/her role play the way he/she saw it. However, as a result it was a play which the photographer, or more precisely, the photographer’s own face mask was imposing the models. It should be noted, the mask was not the exact photographic copy of the photographer’s face, in the process of making (casting my face with gypsum, making the papier-mâché mask, painting), it turned into simulacrum, into the vague resemblance of the photographer’s face on which gypsum was casted.
Finally, the mask began to live its own life, making people, to their opinion, play a game with it. As for me, I am absolutely convinced, that this mask-simulacrum, played its own game with my heroes, and imperceptibly “uncovered” them before the camera.