| Masking is a process intended to disguise or alter the identity of the masker. Masks are considered by most cultures to instigate transformation, communication with otherworldly beings, and supernatural occurrences. Even outside of ceremonial and ritual contexts, masks as objects tend to retain their mystery. The term "masking" in photography most often refers to a literal blocking out of an unwanted area or the depiction of someone wearing a mask. On a more metaphorical level, masking can refer to conceptual aspects of a photograph: what is not readily visible, ambiguity in meaning, or the creation of a persona. In its function as a discourse, masking enables and constrains the following interactions which are analyzed structurally in this dissertation: a figure wears a mask, the camera and the photograph function as masks, the photographer hides behind a mask, and the viewer rounds out the dialogic layering of masking in much the same way that a musician performs a score.;Several art historians and theorists have examined the relationship between masking and photography, though no in-depth study of its strategies of revealing and concealment has been conducted. Masking provides an alternative to the conventional extremist views about the medium, such as the notion that photography directly records objective appearances, or its logical opposite, that by virtue of human intervention a photograph can never relate objective reality. This dissertation offers specific contributions to the discipline of art history in that the terms "mask" and "masking" provide new conceptual possibilities for discussions about photographic image-making, enabling seeming contradictions co-exist and enrich a work's potential meaning, particularly in the areas of documentary and straight photography where they seem to be so inapplicable.;The works of Diane Arbus and Ralph Eugene Meatyard exemplify masking on several levels. Though both Meatyard and Arbus photographed subjects wearing masks and they both dealt with reality as a construction, their use of masking, technically and metaphorically, is often different. By examining their works as masks it becomes questionable whether a person's identity can really be perceived and whether photography necessarily translates identical appearances, especially when identity is caught up in the multi-layered possibilities of masking. |
