Faith Masks

Photography, Commissions

Faith Masks is a photographic series and article about the quasi-religious and ideological values of masks.

Do masks provide confidence, or do they keep fear in your face? Are they scientifically-proven barriers to transmission or hopeful talismans? Do they express communitarianism or abnegation of the self? 

Masks symbolise values that go far beyond science, a new creed we are finding the words for. They emblemise a nascent ‘religion’, in which the moral code is based upon extending life, not securing your place in the afterlife. But in this liminal time, before we have the words and authoritative codification, make no mistake about the symbolism. Masks are the vestiture of the faithful, signalling belief and, importantly, obedience. 

Handwashing and sanitising are daily baptisms, washing away our innate human infectiousness just as the Christian baptism washes away our innate sin. Cathedrals are playing host to mass vaccination in a powerful intersection of the old and new religions. A spaced congregation of the masked elderly waited, listening to organ music in Salisbury Cathedral, for their vaccination, in a rite of biomedical transubstantiation.

As with all religions, your priests demand obedience and piety.

The photographic series and essays by Nina Murden and I was published in the March issue of The Critic.