Paper Dolls

Art Kane's novel and often bizarre approach to photographing the female form has appeared in such diverse publications as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and the German magazine Stern. And now, climaxing a 25-year career, his first collection of "my favorite photographs of women" will soon hit the bookstores. It's called Paper Dolls (Melrose)--"the title was selected long before the television show," Kane says--and nine of the photos you'll see on this and the following pages are on the book's cover. The idea of photographing women in masks came to Kane accidentally: "I'd just (text concluded on page 68) finished a shoot for Bazaar Italia," says the New York native, "and my stylist was on his way to a baseball game in Central Park with a red catcher's mask in his hand. The mask seemed strange and sort of ritualistic, so I asked the model to let me take a few shots of her wearing the mask, stripped to the waist. The result was astonishing. I felt as though I'd expressed a feminist conflict: a woman trapped in a male symbol. And still, the femininity is so strong that it overwhelms these symbols. I tried every kind of mask I could find. Ironically, the shot with the catcher's mask didn't make the book selection."