MASKS

A portrait and reflection project by Jen

MASKS: The Project

MASKS is a passion project for me. It is ongoing. A work in progress.

Each participant chooses a mask. Any mask. Their own choice, their own reasons.

I photograph them. One shot. Then I ask them a question.

That's the whole format — and also not the point at all.

MASKS is a portrait and social-reflection series that uses a simple, slightly strange premise to look at something most of us already know but rarely stop to examine: the way we present ourselves, shift ourselves, and perform ourselves depending on where we are and who we're with.

The mask each person brings isn't meant to reveal a hidden truth or reduce them to a single symbol. It's a starting point. A way in. What someone chooses — and why, and what they say afterward — becomes a glimpse into how they understand their own identity, their roles, their instincts around protection or play or connection.

Together, the portraits form a small, honest look at how individuals move through the world — and what that might tell us about the world itself.

The Question Posed

There's no right answer. No required length. Some people write a sentence. Some write a paragraph. Some sit with it for a while before anything comes. All of that is welcome.

From the Creator

I've been thinking about masks for a long time — though I didn't always call it that.

Not the kind you wear to a party or a protest, though those count too. The quieter ones. The ones you don't always notice you've put on until you're driving home and realize you've been someone slightly different for the last three hours.

I know I do this. I wear different masks in different spaces, and I always have. As a mother, I show up one way. As a daughter, another. As a friend, an employee, a neighbor, a lover — each version of me is real, and each one is also, in some way, edited. Shaped by the room, the relationship, the history, the hope of being received well. I've spent stretches of my life adapting myself to make others comfortable, adjusting the image I put forward based on what I thought was wanted or needed or safe. Most of us have. The question of what others think of us — how we land, what impression we leave — runs quietly under a lot of what we do.

It's only in hindsight that I've come to see how much of this I was doing without realizing it. Some of that awareness has come through my own coaching work — both the coaching I do myself, and what I witness in the people I coach. Again and again, I see how much energy goes into holding a mask in place, and how much can shift when someone begins to loosen it, even slightly. I don't think masks are dishonest, or something to discard entirely. But I've watched people, myself included, find a kind of ease in recognizing which mask they're wearing and asking whether it still fits.

Looking back now, I can see how many of these masks I wore without ever naming them as such. It wasn't something I set out to notice — it revealed itself slowly, mostly through the coaching work I do, both on myself and alongside the people I coach. I've started to recognize the moments when I'm reaching for a familiar mask out of habit rather than choice, and to get curious about what's underneath it. Not to strip everything away, but to see it more clearly.

That's part of why MASKS interests me now. It's not a statement about who we really are versus who we pretend to be. It's an open question — a chance to notice, even briefly, what we present to the world and why.

— Jen, creator, MASKS

Why One Portrait?

One photograph cannot capture a whole person. That's not a flaw in this project — it's the premise.

A single portrait is a glimpse. A fraction of a moment, chosen by both the subject and the photographer, shaped by light and timing and whatever was in the room that day. It can't tell you everything, and it doesn't try to. What it can do is offer one honest, specific image and let that image hold a question rather than an answer.

The same is true of the masks people choose, and the words they write. Nothing here is complete. And I guess feels right for now.

Take Part

If any of this resonates with you — if you're curious about the question, or simply drawn to the idea of choosing a mask and sitting with it for a moment — you're welcome to be part of this.

You'd choose a mask, or I can do that for you - sit , or stand, or dance or be at work-or whatever else- while I take one portrait, That's it. No performance required beyond the one you're already giving every day.

[Contact Jen to participate]