Rubber identity

Our hair is deeply conflated with our identity. For centuries, hair has had complicated connotations with our inner selves, politics, religion, and social liberation. So what happens to our ideas of ourselves when hair is not a factor? “Rubber Identity” is a series of portraits where the figure’s hair is hidden by vintage rubber swimming caps. The models are unnervingly visibly uncomfortable with the caps, when they are no longer able to affect their own character with their hair. While they are seated in classic portraiture postures, these images feel particularly vulnerable, exposed, and intimate. You get the sense that we are seeing them for exactly who they are, for perhaps the first time