Absent Portraits

Absent Portraits

Phillip Toledano has sourced censored packaging from Iran for his photography project ‘Absent Portraits.’  He says: Packaging in which the women have been erased. Inked out, individually, by hand. I remove the blacked-out figure from the surrounding image, and a transformation occurs. The censor becomes an artist. And the censored figure becomes a portrait. A portrait not of a person, but of absence. Of suppression. A portrait of a point of view. The censor, whose job it is to erase, becomes the person who makes us look.’