Self-Portrait, Montevideo after 1942

This is Jeanne Mandello’s "Self-Portrait, Montevideo." Look at those fronds! They’re like strokes from a brush, slashing across the space. The light is low and flickering, making stripes on her face and clothes. It’s all angles and planes, kind of Cubist in a way, but with the humid feel of the tropics. I wonder what she was thinking when she made this. Was she trying to hide, or to reveal herself? Maybe both. I like how the leaves become a kind of mask, or a screen. It’s like she’s playing with the idea of identity, of showing and concealing. It makes me think about other photographers like Claude Cahun who used self-portraiture to explore their own shifting sense of self. In this photo, Mandello captures something about the way we all construct our own images, and how we are always in dialogue with the world around us. Artists are always speaking to each other!