Photographing Shalva Nikvashvili's creepy and innovative masks

Hailing from Georgia, Shalva Nikvashvili makes beautiful masks out of found objects and materials – exploring, quite literally, the masks we wear both to fit in and to stand out. Manoeuvring between the banal and the extreme, he constructs his works out of everything from sacks to old keyboards to scraps of leather. In a new shoot for Dazed Beauty with Thomas Liam Davis and Phoebe Walters, and shot by beauty photographer Jackson Bowley, they explore the ideas of desensitisation and alienation in the social media age. With a 1980s London clubland sensibility (think Leigh Bowery's penchant for masks) where clubgoers tried to outdo one another's outfits, 'the masks that we wear' is a nod to the way in which, online today, we often try to outdo one another's digital lives or appearances. 

Credits: 

Photography: Jackson Bowley
Assisted by: Patrick Dowse
Stylist: Thomas Liam Davis
Assisted by: Bert Gilbert
Make-up: Phoebe Walters
Assisted by:Jayde Coxon and Daisy Moore
Hair stylist: Tom Wright
Shoot Concept and Art Direction: Thomas Liam Davis and Phoebe Walters
Models: Edga at Supa, Dakis Panayiotou, Antonin Dansicare, Stefan Djokic, Lea Guler
Casting: Ethan Price
Masks by: Shalva Nikvashvili
Special thanks to: THE SINISTRY