mask_hero serie

Mask_Hero_portraits

An epidemic, an unhealthy virus, an invisible enemy, an air of the Middle Ages plague, a hint of obscurantism…. And, of course, people in anguish who are suffering and who are our friends. I didn’t want to make it an aesthetic pretext or images that testify. We don’t photograph the air we breathe. The infectious virus has transformed our cities and our surroundings; the mask has become the accomplice of our wanderings. Behind the masks we no longer see the smiles, the glances are blurred. Passers-by in the street, those we meet without knowing them, emit signals that confirm some abstract connivance. When these signals disappear, it is a relationship with others that goes out as fleeting and imperceptible as it is. And it feels like loneliness. We no longer know in this flood of masks if we protect ourselves from the others or if we protect them from us. This portraits’ serie speaks of isolation, a new genre in these times of tendency towards trans-humanism.

22 images for an art of the moment, of here and now. 

22 large size images that only make sense in this format (160x200cm) in order to keep the illusion of reality at bay.

Francois BANCON, February 2020.