The Anonymous Series; Self Reflection
By Tom Wilkins
By Tom Wilkins
Anonymous began as an accident. Or maybe more truthfully, as a confession I wasn’t ready to speak out loud. I set out to make portraits, but found myself turning the camera around, again and again—not out of vanity, but necessity. I realized I wasn’t just documenting others; I was trying to understand my place in the act of looking.
This is a series of self-portraits, though none of them show my full face. That absence is the point. These images are about the tension I live with as a photographer: the desire to observe without being observed. We live in a culture that demands visibility, yet my instinct has always been to remain in the shadows. I’m most comfortable behind the lens; anonymous, silent, unseen.
Each photograph in Anonymous explores a different variation of this concealment. A hood, a mask, hair falling in front of the eyes; small gestures that distance the viewer from the subject. And yet, they’re all deeply personal. In the act of hiding, I reveal. The lowered gaze, the anxious tension in posture, the refusal to meet the camera directly; it’s all honest. Maybe more honest than a smile ever could be.
Black and white was essential. It strips away distraction, flattens ego, and returns the focus to form, texture, and emotion. Light and shadow become metaphors for exposure and retreat. The monochrome palette reflects the binary that drives the work: presence and absence, seen and unseen, subject and spectator.
Anonymous is not about identity, but about the spaces where identity blurs. It’s about choosing invisibility not as a weakness, but as an act of creative resistance. It asks: can you see the artist without seeing their face? Can you hear their voice, even when it’s whispered through fabric and silence?
This series doesn’t claim to resolve those questions. It only lives in them.