Claudia O'Keeffe 1922

Alfred Stieglitz captured this image of Claudia O’Keeffe with gelatin silver print. Here, a sleeping woman embraces a mask; a juxtaposition that plunges us into the depths of identity and representation. The mask, an ancient symbol, has served across cultures as a medium for transformation, ritual, and disguise. Consider the Greek theatrical masks, emblems of tragedy and comedy, or the African ceremonial masks, conduits to ancestral spirits. Here, the mask presses against flesh, blurring the line between the artificial and the real. Such imagery evokes the ‘Manikin series’ of de Chirico, where the manikin embodies the alienation of modern life. This photograph whispers of Freud’s concepts of the uncanny, in which the familiar becomes disturbingly strange. It is as if the mask, lying dormant, anticipates a new awakening to be reborn again and again in various cultural forms.