Razzle Dazzle

Newly commissioned for PHOTO 2024, Razzle Dazzle is a series of portraits of people trying to evade facial recognition technology… to varying degrees of success.

In World War One, Razzle Dazzle camouflage was an outlandish method used by Allied Forces to confuse enemy ships into mis-locating their fleet. Wild stripes and crazy geometric patterns were painted on the hulls of the boats so that they hid in plain sight. Jo Duck takes this ploy and adapts it to explore what privacy might mean in a not-so-distant future.

People born in the internet age have been tracked since birth. Everywhere we go we are recorded without consent and facial recognition technology is ubiquitous. With absurd problems come absurd solutions, whether in donning a teddybear decoy to confuse the cameras, fashioning a personal waterfall to obscure your face, or becoming the invisible woman, these portraits ponder the lengths that we might go to to retain our privacy.