The Mirror Mask had been sitting around my studio for years.

The idea actually started at the Royal College of Art in 2006, when I was experimenting with panoramic photographs (before anyone could make them on their IPhone) and making strange composite faces from different people. Over the next twenty years I kept coming back to mirrors, faces and technology, slowly developing the idea.

In 2017, What I’m Looking At, or the Mirror Mask as it became known, finally appeared.  

The basic idea was simple: what if, instead of showing people what you look like, you showed them what you’re looking at?

A broken mirror, a device for seeing what my students were looking at as laptops became a regular thing in lectures. 10 years of development into the form you may recognise today.

I started making films with it, partly inspired by the Eames’ experiments with sound, colour and texture. 

Then, just before New Year’s Eve 2025, we posted one of them online.

By midnight it had reached a million views.

Eventually it passed ten million.

Suddenly people weren’t just watching the mask. They wanted to use it themselves.

So I started sending them out into the world.

And that’s when it became much more interesting.

Looking outwards

Thousands of masks are now being used around the world, and people are showing me things I could never have imagined filming myself.

They look at flowers, weddings, the wonderful everyday, festivals and sunsets. They show their friends. They show their cooking, painting, ceramics, embroidery, DJing and all the strange little things that make up a life.

The person disappears and their world becomes their portrait.

That is really what the Mirror Mask is about.

I call it an anti-selfie. It uses the same technology that encourages us to constantly photograph ourselves, but turns the camera back towards the world.

There is an obvious contradiction here: the mask is anti-selfie, but it became a global phenomenon through Instagram and smartphones.

I quite like that contradiction.

Technology isn’t necessarily the problem. Perhaps we just need to use it differently.

The phrase I keep coming back to is a part of nature, not apart from nature. The mask places you back into your surroundings. The tree, the person, the sunset or the work you’re making becomes part of your portrait.

The work leaves the studio

There are now around 5,000 Mirror Masks around the world. Over 150 million views across social media. So much joy and reflection. It’s been seen on GQ, Jaden Smith, Dawn French, Joy Anonymous, Red Bull, Design Boom and so much more.

At some point, the work stopped being something I was making. The audience completes the work. It’s about what the world is looking at.

That is the exciting bit.

I’ve always liked the idea of dropping pebbles into a pond. You make something, put it into the world and see where the ripples go.

I don’t know exactly what the Mirror Mask movement will become. We’re beginning to send prompts to the community and make collective films together, and I’m deliberately trying not to control what comes back.

Mirroring FOOD

Reflecting SKY

People will use the mask in ways I love, ways I don’t understand and probably ways I completely disagree with.

That’s fine.

The mask doesn’t really belong to me anymore.

It belongs to whoever picks it up, puts it on and decides what is worth looking at.

So flip the camera around. Stop looking at yourself. Go find some magic in the world.

Because despite all the noise, all the algorithms, all the AI-generated slop, all the pressure to present a perfect version of yourself online, there is still something incredibly powerful about saying:

This is what I’m looking at.