A perfect disguise is one-dimensional.
It just says, in Java parlance, I am casting myself into something I am not. I am taking on all the attributes of another class..I dress as an arab and people talk to me as if I understand arabic.
Criminals wear suits and ties when facing judges. The piece of fabric around their necks indicates they belong to a different category of men.. one you would respect and believe and vindicate.
Interestingly enough, the deception might be known to both ( the faker and the believer ), but in a momentous suspension of disbelief only the human race is capable of, they both agree to ignore it.. but that is the subject of a different chapter..
You take an old painting of sultan Mehmet III on horseback and you photoshop your own head on it. It is done perfectly thus it passes for reality. Ok.. so.. Mehmet looked like you. Maybe this serves as an allegory or whatever..
What now if the grafting was blatantly imperfect.. if you could see the outline of the grafted picture, different shadows, different colour palette. No attempt at disguise no attempt to convince that indeed this was Mehmet ?
Suddenly you are projecting something very different. A transparent disguise .. a disguise in which you are broadcasting "this is not a disguise" ( brings to mind Magritte "this is not a pipe" ! ).The disguise of a price as "cheap" by subtracting 1 cent.. $1999.99 !
The moment in Antonioni's "Blow-up" where the photographer pcks up the non-existent ball and throws it back to the non-existent tennis game.
And you are forcing the observer to deal with that.. this is a very different protocol !
Not far from Bush saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
I guess that this is what I am trying to explore with the series of transparent disguise photos. This sense of organized collusion that no one wants to call by it's proper name...
