anonymity

Some time in 2004, Poklong Anading photographed a series of people, including friends and passers-by, each holding a circular mirror in front of their faces, reflecting sunlight back to the artist’s camera. On first viewing, Anading’s anonymity series looks straightforward enough as artistic black-and-white portraits of people on the streets of Manila. Yet, as the title of the work suggests, and the overexposure from the reflected sunlight attests, these “portraits” do not reveal the identity of these people, performing instead a kind of counter-gaze to the artist and his camera.