Faces and masks

Looks and faces reveal and hide; masks hide and show. Faces can be masks and masks can be faces. The key is to know how to read the signals. In the same way the memory is an organ that makes us forget and, also, makes us remember things that never existed, the look can also be deceitful: in some films, bank robbers wear Donald Duck’s mask, you think that your lover’s eyes say they love you while they are actually intending a cheat, you can find killer clowns in the street, politicians talk on TV showing faces that feel like honesty and concern for the nation and for everyone watching, we see faces that seem to be in deep transcendent meditation while their mind pays interest only to football, shopping or porn.

However, they do not only cheat, they also reveal, specially the looks that stay still, like the ones in a piece of art or inanimate objects. The photographs capture an expression at an instant, a look, a feeling, and such image becomes separate from whoever caused it, no matter what they wanted, wished o searched for, no matter if it really ever happened, the only important fact is the trace it leaves behind, that is signal which needs to be read.