Joshua is a a fourth-year Criminology, Law, and Society student. He photographed a collection of masks he had worn over the year and wrote about the significance of each mask.

“A Mask for Every Occasion,” November 26th, 2020

This picture displays several of the masks that I have worn throughout the year. I ordered the mask based on the order in which I received them, with the masks in bags being received at about the same time. The mask on the left is a homemade mask that was given to me from one of my mother’s friends. It consists of two overlapping cloths and a gap on the top that allows me to place a filter between the cloths. I use this mask in particular whenever I leave the house and interact with people in public. The more casual circumstances that I wear this mask in have led me to refer to it as my “casual mask.” I used my casual mask during the month-long household quarantine that I was in until I receive the next set of masks. I received the masks depicted in the bags during that same quarantine from my grandparents through the mail. The lower mask in the bag with the initials “JA” was the N95 mask that I wore the most during the household quarantine. When I began wearing the mask, it felt tight and filtered the air within the mask with a fragrance that I grew to disdain, because I began to associate it with the quarantine. I recall having particular difficulties putting the mask on due to the straps that I had never previously encountered. As time passed throughout the household quarantine, I began to notice the scent less and the mask itself began to fit better, because the elastic within the straps began to stretch more to fit my head. I had grown accustomed to putting on the mask whenever I left my room for any reason and even grew fond of the mask until the household quarantine was over. The masks within the bag above the N95 mask were sent near the end of our quarantine and remain currently unused. The mask on the far right is the Harry Potter themed mask that I wore on the day before Halloween for a community event and on the day of Halloween itself. I was unfamiliar with this type of mask and realized that I preferred masks with straps. With the exception of the bagged masks at the top of the image, each mask was used in vastly different circumstances and are associated with distinct memories that I have had from the beginning of the year to the months approaching the year’s end.