Did you know that Polynesian chiefs sometimes had their tattooed heads preserved? That must have been a way to remember and revere past leaders. Europeans became fascinated with these artifacts and tried to purchase them. To satisfy the demand, unscrupulous people, native or otherwise, tattooed the faces of slaves and then sold the heads to European collectors.
Quite a market, don't you think? Maybe some people would think that was better than killing rinoceros or elephants for horns and tusks, given how many humans there are on this planet compared to rinoceros and elephants. I do not approve of trophy hunting, human or animal, and do not condone slavery in any form for any purpose.
Anyway, here is my mask for the first week of the Abstract Painting class. I used a panoramic tattoo design, printed that out on 11x17 paper, cut out the eye holes, and trimmed the empty margins. Then I fashioned a clasp and positioned the mask on my face. Using my ultra-wide angle lens, I then photographed myself with the mask in place, and then without the mask, in a somewhat frightened pose.
In GIMP I cut out the useful components and inserted them into various layers so I could move them around. I used a police lineup grid for the background superimposed upon a stippled map of Bora Bora. Then I cut off my own head, in GIMP of course, and had my decapitated body hold the masked head. Maybe this is how the slaves' spirits felt.