Cecil McDonald: Jr. The Making Mask

Those that wear the mask lose their human life and turn into the spirit represented by the mask; in this case, The Making Mask. The Making Mask represents supernatural beings, ancestral, fanciful or imagined figures. It masquerades, hiding identity while expressing one’s freedom of voice, emotions and opinions without judgment; The Making Mask celebrates the virtue in ambivalence, the if in creating.

The view camera, which I selected from the Rod Slemmons Camera Archive to create the works in The Making Mask, is more machine than an entity that offers its own set of mysteries. Unwieldy, bulky and awkward, the view camera encourages a return to play, chance and experimentation. Pure in its analog state, it forces the maker to shoot blind, released from the comfort of the assurance created by a digital mindset. Both apparatuses proved to be portals to other worlds, just outside our reach though firmly within reach in our collective imaginations.

Cecil McDonald, Jr.
Spring 2022

The Making Mask is part of an ongoing series of photography exhibitions in Slemmons Gallery in which contemporary photographers use antique cameras from the Rod Slemmons Camera Archive to create new bodies of work. This series is offered in partnership with The Chicago Cluster Project.
To register below to attend the free opening reception on May 20 at 6 p.m. For more information and sales inquiries, please email art@epiphanychi.com.

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