The Two Faces of Juliet 1939

György Kepes made "The Two Faces of Juliet" using a photographic process, layering images and lines to create something that feels both familiar and totally alien. Look how the ghostly profiles are disrupted by those sharp, geometric lines. It’s like Kepes is dissecting the very idea of portraiture, showing us how an image can be both a representation and an abstraction. The texture is grainy, almost like a charcoal drawing, which gives it a tactile, handmade feel despite being a photograph. There's a tension between the soft, blurred edges of the faces and the hard, precise lines that cut across them. It reminds me a bit of Moholy-Nagy, who was also experimenting with photography. Both were interested in how new technologies could change the way we see, challenging our assumptions about reality and representation. It’s a conversation between the visible and the invisible, the real and the imagined.