Jean-Pierre Khazem

From Fashion Photography to the Construction of the Face

Khazem was born in Paris in 1968 and worked across fashion magazines, advertising, moving-image production, and contemporary art. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the pose of the model, lighting, prosthetic makeup, and image retouching allowed the human figure to be precisely designed, and artificial bodies circulated widely in both advertising and contemporary art. The Guardian introduced his work through the relation among fashion, image, and identity.^*1 Using techniques learned in commercial photography, Khazem shifted attention from the assumption that the face naturally expresses an interior self toward the visual conventions through which a person is recognized.

A Masked Face and a Live Body

Khazem has said that he chose the Mona Lisa because reproduction on posters and postcards had made it an omnipresent face, mysterious yet almost anonymous.^*2 An elaborate mask restricts the model’s expression and field of vision, leaving posture, stride, and breath to sustain the scene. Färgfabriken explained that these conditions turn the shoot into a performance and alter the model’s relation to her body, the outside world, and the audience.^*3 The mask produces immediate recognition of a famous face while maintaining its mismatch with a moving body, adding time before the photograph to the work.

In Pause, five nude figures wearing the same mask move through a space containing mirrored surfaces; in Mona Lisa Live, a model remains on a pedestal. Sperone Westwater describes a production in which photography, video, and performance overlap.^*4 A live audience witnesses breathing and duration, while a later viewer receives that time as one photograph of a past event. Khazem requires photography because it can give a constructed action the appearance of something that has already happened.

How a Fixed Expression Intensifies Bodily Performance

In a conventional portrait, changes in eyes and mouth provide cues to emotion. Khazem’s masks fix those features, making the tilt of a shoulder, the position of an arm, the length of a step, and the movement of the chest through breathing more conspicuous. Eyestorm explains that the mask reduces the model’s awareness of the camera and encourages a full-bodied response to the assigned situation.^*5 The habit of reading psychology from a face is dispersed across the body’s center of gravity, the material of the mask, and the duration of performance.

Separating “Likeness” across Face, Body, and Setting

In First Ladies, the modeled face, hairstyle, clothing, upright posture, official-portrait lighting, and title of the series call up the memory of a public figure. Christie’s records show the series circulating as large C-prints, fixing political icons as autonomous photographs apart from the live role.^*6 Identity appears when several visual conventions align; facial resemblance alone is insufficient.

A nearly seamless mask, even lighting, and large print make the fabrication appear real. The immobile expression, the position of the eyes, and the boundary between artificial skin and neck retain signs of construction. Viewers test which details support recognition and how much discrepancy they will accept before the figure ceases to be the person named. Photographic detail does not immediately settle truth or falsehood; it reveals how plausibility is built. ^*5

Prosthetic makeup, sculpting, casting, and skin coloring are involved in making the masks, and photographic lighting brings the artificial skin closer to the appearance of a living face. Materials from CNAP and Eyestorm treat the mask as a sculptural component of the work, beyond its role as a prop.^*7 Its hardness and seams become visible nearby, while from an appropriate distance it reads as a celebrity face. This change with distance reverses the expectation that photographic resolution necessarily uncovers truth: additional detail can also increase the persuasiveness of the artificial object. ^*5

Pause: A Still Face and a Moving Body

Made in 2002, Pause combines figures, reflections, masks, video, and photography within an architectural environment of mirrored surfaces. Färgfabriken presented the installation as a space altered by the viewer’s position and reflection.^*3 The “pause” of the title connects the instant of photography with the duration for which a live body holds a pose. The figure occupies an intermediate state, never fully becoming a still image and never returning to unmarked movement; the work makes the freezing of time in portraiture physically perceptible.

Mona Lisa Live and the Embodiment of a Famous Painting

Mona Lisa Live (2003) is a performance in which a nude model wearing an elaborate Mona Lisa mask stands on a pedestal in a field of light. Sperone Westwater records its first presentation at Deitch Projects and later appearances at the Prague Biennale and the Rubell Family Collection.^*4 When the face of one of the world’s most reproduced paintings moves onto a living body, the mystique of the masterpiece and the appeal of spectacle appear together. The poses of painting, sculpture, fashion presentation, and photography overlap in one scene. ^*8

First Ladies: Reconstructing Official Portraiture on Another Body

First Ladies attaches the face, dress, etiquette, and media visibility through which the wives of U.S. presidents have been made into public roles to the bodies of other women. The series was shown in New York in 2005 and later circulated through the market and collections. The position of the “First Lady”—close to political power yet without a distinct elected office—becomes visible through borrowed portraiture and substitution. ^*6

Khazem continued to stage masks, characters, and bodies in fashion media, including collaborations with Misi Park. AnOther describes the image known as fashion’s “white rabbit” as a work in which charm and unease coexist.^*9 He does not separate commercial and artistic fields; both construct figures through lighting, clothing, face, and story. Because he uses the seductive surface of fashion rather than refusing it, the work remains between critique and participation.

At Mona Lisa Live, an audience shares the time in which the model breathes and maintains her posture. In the photograph, that duration contracts into one uncanny portrait. Sperone Westwater treats the performance history and photographic works as one production history because the two modes of viewing transform one another.^*4 Live, the fixed mask and bodily fatigue become visible; in the still image, surface and composition gain force. The work resides in the conversion of a time-bound body into a fixed image.

The model’s eyes can be seen through openings in the carefully made mask, while the facial muscles remain still. The discrepancy creates an uncanniness associated with dolls or corpses, although the body continues to breathe and hold its pose. Eyestorm identifies this disturbance of facial reading and human psychology as a feature of the work.^*5 A surface that does not respond exposes how viewers infer personhood from minute movements of the face.

Bringing Staged Photography and Performance into One Production Process

Since the 1970s, photographs of performance have often been exhibited as records of actions, while staged photography in the 1980s and 1990s constructed scenes for the camera. Khazem transforms an unstable action sustained before an audience into a highly finished photograph. The uncertainty of the live event and the decisiveness of the photograph enter one production process. The exhibition history of photographs from Pause at a Paris photography institution also records this movement between forms.^*3

The Tension among Images of Women, Nudity, and Fashion

In images of nude women wearing masks, the face is read as a celebrity or fixed expression while the body breathes, shifts posture, and remains exposed before an audience. This gap destabilizes the subject, yet it can also repeat the display of the female body as an object of viewing. Criticism in The Guardian and Paris Art has addressed the coexistence of seduction, artificiality, and objectification.^*1 A mask may critique a social role without automatically making the presentation of the nude body critical. ^*10

The power of authentication in Khazem’s photographs changes according to whose face the viewer sees, which historical image comes to mind, and whether they witnessed the live work or only encounter the still photograph. Fashion projects and collaborations preserved on the official site also connect the mask to immediate recognition in advertising.^*11 The discrepancy between mask and body exposes the way photography uses context and familiarity to create the appearance of an event that has already occurred.

Separate from their legally defined authority, First Ladies have circulated as photographic images representing nation, family, decorum, and the style of an era. First Ladies turns the face into an exchangeable mask, exposing the dependence of public recognition on media repetition as much as on an individual’s actions. The series simultaneously reenacts an institution that attaches women to their husbands’ political histories, leaving a tension between critique and reproduction. Sperone Westwater likewise emphasizes the automatic chain of associations from a face to a president and to American history.^*12

Khazem’s photographs and performances appeared at Perrotin, a Paris photography institution, the Prague Biennale, and the Rubell Collection, establishing Mona Lisa Live as a work moving among live event, documentary photograph, and museum display, rather than as a one-time spectacle.^*13*14*18 Gallery archives and lists of works show masked portraiture recurring beyond Mona Lisa and First Ladies in fashion, nude figures, and cinematic scenes.^*16*17*15

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston collection record for Mona Lisa: Problematics of Identity Theory I & II confirms that the joining of a famous face to another body entered collections as an autonomous photographic work as well as a performance record. Smithsonian exhibition materials explain that the First Lady has visually represented an administration and nation despite being distinct from a statutory public office, clarifying the background to Khazem’s treatment of face, dress, and posture as interchangeable forms.^*19*20