Judith Henry's 'Beauty Masks Portraits' Artist Book Explores Identity and Surveillance

Judith Henry's artist book 'Beauty Masks Portraits,' published by Small Editions in Brooklyn in 2020, features close-up color photographs of young women's faces cut from fashion magazines, held by the artist to cover her own face, creating a self-portrait matrix that conceals yet reveals. The project engages with themes of identity shifts, social artifice, and surveillance, reflecting contemporary concerns about privacy and disinformation amplified during the coronavirus pandemic. Henry, a Brooklyn-based multimedia artist with a 40-year career, previously explored similar motifs in series like 'Makeover,' 'Masquerade,' and 'Me as Her,' where she recontextualized historical figures such as Emma Goldman and Virginia Woolf in Williamsburg. Photographer Howard Saunders captured all images indoors with natural light using an iPhone 8 Plus, while Grace Graupe-Pillard contributed an introduction. The book, priced at $40 with ISBN 978-0-578-64727-2, is available via PayPal due to limited pandemic distribution. Henry's work draws comparisons to theatrical self-portraitists like Cindy Sherman, Lucas Samaras, Claude Cahun, and Hannah Höch, emphasizing psychological complexity and artistic stature. The imagery juxtaposes glamour with grotesquery, using color and black-and-white contrasts to dramatize artifice, questioning beauty norms and career status through masquerade.