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Just outside Death Valley National Park, New York dancer Marta Becket created the Amargosa Opera House in the 1960s. The opera house has an art gallery featuring mysterious masked mannequins at its windows -- this one peers at us through its lace curtains. The design of the curtains suggests an earlier era, while the masked face behind them is more ghostly than real. I tried to strike a balance between revealing the face and only suggesting its presence, using both the curtains and exposure to abstract the masked figure. The image asks more questions than it answers. Why is the mannequin there? Why is it masked? And why is it hiding behind a curtain? I guess Marta Becket would know, and she is not talking.
Image Copyright © held by Phil Douglis, The Douglis Visual Workshops