Rostro con Peces, Shipibo Conibo, Pucallpa, Peru (Face with Fish, Shipibo Conibo, Pucallpa, Peru) 1996

Javier Silva Meinel made this photograph, Rostro con Peces, Shipibo Conibo, Pucallpa, Peru, at an unknown date. The stark monochrome palette is immediately striking, drawing attention to the textures and the interplay of light and shadow. The face is a landscape etched with time. Look closely at the fish, their scales shimmering against the duller tones of the skin. There’s a strange tension between the living and the inanimate, the natural and the staged. I like how the photograph invites you to consider the process of seeing, or not seeing. The fish, obscuring her eyes, become a kind of mask, an augmentation, an invitation. It reminds me a little of Hannah Höch, or Man Ray, in the way it reconfigures the human form, allowing for new ways of looking. There’s a playful ambiguity here, a refusal to settle on one fixed meaning.