The theme I will be exploring is the lack/loss of identity, and i’ll be looking at multiple different photographers to gain ideas to add to my final piece.

Michalina Woźniak is a self-taught Polish photographer and has been taking pictures since 2009. In her Identity Series, she focuses on the loss/lack of identity and portrays it through dark and gloomy images.

I’m a self taught 21 y.o. photographer based in Lublin (Poland). I’m in love with deep and dark emotions, the more disturbing they are, the more powerful they’re for me. I need those strong connections between me and another worlds (creations) to FEEL it and to be able to touch it somehow.

This story is about Identity and alter ego, but everyone can find whatever he/she wants here. I don’t want to tell you what’s it all about, I want you to look for it and to feel it.

Photography is like a poem – it’s all about the impression and impulse. You need to feel it, to find the moment.

– Michanlina Wosniak

Contact sheets:

For my theme, I focused on the aspect of a masked face, and not being able to see the identity of the model in the picture. I also tried replicating pictures done by Wozniak, of a masked person looking into the mirror, surface which gives off a reflection, or looking directly into the camera. These link to my theme of the lack/loss of identity as the face of the person is hidden, and them looking into the mirror with the mask on, touching their face as if in confusion or distress, suggests that they themselves don’t know who they are. I got my subject to do multiple poses for this project,  looking right at the camera with the mask, touching their face with their hands, and looking to a mirror or reflection.

Chosen edits:

I chose these images because I believe that they relate to the theme of lack/loss of identity and portray Michalina Woźniak’s work successfully, with the masked subject and the eerie black and white setting. I think they also show a story, the first picture she seems normal, staring into the camera as if nothing’s wrong. Then in the second image, she’s touching her face as if she had just realised something, maybe the fact that she lacks identity. And in the last image it’s as if she’s in distress, her hands covering her mask as if she’s hiding away.

I like my final outcomes, they tell a story of someone who’s lost their identity and don’t know who they are, but I believe I could have taken more of a variety of images, with more mirrors, more poses and different people, including me. That would have defiantly increased the quality of this project.