I like the weird world that emerges, viewing the photographs of Susanna Hesselberg and Jessica Bruah together…

Hesselberg and Bruah both playfully twist and turn the human form, puppeteering in a way, manipulating this thingness of tangled arms and legs.  Both photographers obscure or cut out any defining features of their subjects.  Faceless, these beings are at most male or female, but empty of any more specific identity.

Identity is dictated, hidden, and revealed by these beings’ surroundings, which are powerful.  A vague social anxiety permeates the air.

(Below, from top to bottom: Susanna Hesselberg, Jessica Bruah, Susanna Hesselberg)

Hesselberg’s figures are molded optical illusions — whether they’re staged sculptural/performance pieces, or pinpointed photographic decisive moments (as when a cloud of smoke or tossed paper wad take on the role of a man’s head).  There’s a Wonderland sense that anything can happen, though any delight or forboding message comes across as only a whisper alongside the spellbinding visuals, in which things and people merge.  (Below: Photographs by Susanna Hesselberg)

Brauh has more specifically identified a tone in facelessness — a kind of domestic anxiety in dollhouse dressings.  This is a home life wherein a viewer can’t tell the difference between people and manequins.  Headless, faceless, and often askew, these hapless house-bound women and men are overcome by dishes and drapery, and succumb to laundry and bubblewrap.  It’s a familiar madhouse — the dissarray amid domestic chores — but one where coathangers dance in anarchy.  There is a muted comic tone, except for that slight by persistent fear that things could go horribly wrong with a single slip up or drop of the toilet-paper roll.  (Below: Photographs by Jessica Bruah)

[Weegee Couch] Photograph by Alex W. Meriwether, 2004