The back of a head, filling most of a pale grey field. The hair is short, wet-combed, and drawn up into two stiff points that rise from the crown like ears or horns; below them the cut is close, and the individual comb-marks stay legible all the way to the nape. A dark ring sits in the near ear. The black rolled collar of a sweater begins at the base of the neck, and the shoulders below it are a solid black mass occupying the bottom of the frame.
It is a portrait of a hairstyle, and the decision to photograph it from behind is the only decision that matters. Turned around, this would be a face with an unusual haircut, and the face would win. From here nothing competes: no expression to read, no eyes to meet, no way to guess an age or a mood. What is left is a shape and a set of textures, both rendered with the plainness of a specimen photograph.
Whether the shape is meant to suggest an animal is not something the picture will say. The points read as ears if one is looking for ears and as nothing in particular otherwise, and the photograph supplies no context — no costume, no setting, no title beyond a name — that would settle it. It has photographed a head from the one angle that guarantees the head cannot answer, and then stopped.
The back of a head, filling most of a pale grey field. The hair is short, wet-combed, and drawn up into two stiff points that rise from the crown like ears or horns; below them the cut is close, and the individual comb-marks stay legible all the way to the nape. A dark ring sits in the near ear. The black rolled collar of a sweater begins at the base of the neck, and the shoulders below it are a solid black mass occupying the bottom of the frame.
It is a portrait of a hairstyle, and the decision to photograph it from behind is the only decision that matters. Turned around, this would be a face with an unusual haircut, and the face would win. From here nothing competes: no expression to read, no eyes to meet, no way to guess an age or a mood. What is left is a shape and a set of textures, both rendered with the plainness of a specimen photograph.
Whether the shape is meant to suggest an animal is not something the picture will say. The points read as ears if one is looking for ears and as nothing in particular otherwise, and the photograph supplies no context — no costume, no setting, no title beyond a name — that would settle it. It has photographed a head from the one angle that guarantees the head cannot answer, and then stopped.