Twins

E AND SAR, Elizabeth, New Jersey, 1978
Black and white photograph created with 120 film, 20” x 20”, Artist’s Collection

The theme of twinship is a very important element in this exhibition. I created two masks for the series, representing the classical forms of comedy and tragedy. The masks mirror two parts of myself that go by many names—youth and age, past and present, vitality and depression, parent and child, sister and brother, masculine and feminine, ordinary and extraordinary.

The photo of E and Sar, my maternal great-aunts, reaches back into my past. They’re identical twins born at the very end of the 19th century. Here, I add a third part to this image—an old restored photo of the twins, taken around 1900. Although unmasked, their twin faces have a strange mask-like quality. In the 1978 photo, E on the left wears my mask, while Sar wears the mask of my German father-in-law for reasons I can only guess. Maybe it’s to show the family connection to the old country, where my extended family lived for generations, and where many of them perished in the Holocaust because they were Jewish. E and Sar’s surname is Schneiweis, a variation of Schneeweiss, German for snow white.

ALEXA AND EMMA, Port Washington, NY, 2024
Digital color print, 20” x 20”,
Artist’s Collection

Twins are also part of my contemporary extended family. Alexa and Emma are fraternal twins, the daughters of my niece, Nikki, featured in an earlier photo. They’re 13 years old, living in the suburbs of New York, and are quite close, although their appearances and personalities are distinct. Behind them are mirrors reflecting a colorful sculptured lighting fixture. Looking at them in my masks, I easily see myself in double—smiling and frowning, young and preoccupied, with a touch of the theatrical.

In looking at these paired photos that depict twins at different ages—children, adolescents, and elders—I conclude that the younger and smaller the subjects, the larger the masks. And the larger the masks, the more I sense a hint of immortality.