Behind My Masks
In Behind My Masks, Lucian Roman photographs the language of the mannequin—its flawless surface, fixed gaze, and engineered anonymity—as a metaphor for the selves we assemble and present. Working in monochrome film, he embraces grain, softness, and flare to keep the images suspended between document and dream.
Shop windows become both barrier and mirror: a place where the face is rehearsed, duplicated, and occasionally lost. The series’ tight crops and oblique angles deny easy recognition, pushing the viewer toward psychological reading rather than biography. What emerges is a quiet tension between intimacy and display—between the private interior and the public façade—where identity is less a fact than a shifting performance shaped by light, glass, and the city’s gaze.