Faces without Faces (An Ode to My Sisters)
A while ago I happened upon a painting by Gideon Rubin. He paints only faceless portraits, and his entire oeuvre is devoted to capturing a person’s essence without the precision of identifiable features. Any temporal or spatial context is deliberately blurred. Yet, when you look at his work you can still discern distinct individuals—their histories, their pasts, their present lives. You see people, or you recognize yourself, in an intimate way—sometimes it’s you, sometimes it’s someone you know well. Boundaries dissolve, imagination steps in. Rubin’s canvases summon memories, spark associations, and leave generous space for dreaming.
As my eyes glide over the flat swaths of paint and those erased yet present faces, I think of us, fleeting companions.
Our ancestors once strutted their allure in the parlors of brothels, the windows of red light districts, on tango dance floors, or down the narrow cobblestone alleys.
Today, we solicit on the internet.
Like Rubin’s anonymous figures, most of us present ourselves with hidden faces. We try to reveal who we are in order to attract people with whom we’ll click, while keeping our true identities secret. It is a strange dance of seduction: the challenge is to show ourselves without fully exposing ourselves. No faces, yet an attempt to hint at our uniqueness, our sensitivity, our beauty.
Consequently, profiles become surreal—blurred outlines, flowers, clouds or jewels replace facial features while bodies are revealed, limited only by the prevailing censorship. What matters most is transmitting energy, the spark that provokes emotion, the flame that makes a stranger want to meet us.
That, of course, is what we call “communication,” but it is more than that.
Behind the evocative pseudonyms that already say so much lie lace, dream like bodies, and all the trappings of luxury—plus humor, wit, flashes of strength and fragility, a deep humanity, and, very often, poetry. Picture vertiginous heels, garter belts, plates of delicate dishes, colossal glasses of wine, rumpled sheets, reflections in antique or bathroom mirrors, strands of hair, necks, navels, slender fingers, wrists, and moles. Artifice and naturalness coexist. Pieces, fragments, details… Intimacy.
You, pirate women, heroines of the greatest films, extraordinary beauties who navigate the edges of countless worlds—I love wandering the virtual web, admiring you. I want to meet you, talk and laugh with you, hold you, inhale your scent, taste your flavor.
Even though I have never met most of you in real life, it feels as if I already know you. And when we finally meet, it will seem as though we have always known each other.
Oh, you have that face.
Everything suddenly clicks into place.
I hadn’t imagined you exactly like that, but of course you have that face! It’s so obvious—how could it be otherwise?
As we stare into each other’s eyes, the puzzle pieces settle, forming a whole at last.
The glaze is applied.
Even if each of us remains a mystery waiting to be unraveled.
