Silver in Analog/People / 2025 / Analog / People

• Prize
  Silver in Analog/People
• Photographer
  Breana Helders Mazzagatte, United States
• Website
  https://breanamazzagatte.com/
• Instagram
  https://www.instagram.com/breanahelders/

This photo captures a performer in the intimate moments when the show ends. The lashes come off, the glitter is wiped away, and skin bears the imprints of their craft: the tightness of tape, the red seams of fishnets, the dent of a wig cap. Exploring the metaphorical masks we all wear—those carefully crafted versions of ourselves we present to the world to appear stronger, braver, or less wounded than we feel. In revealing the physical traces left behind by costume and character, it becomes a quiet meditation on the armor we all carry, and what it means to set it down.

Breana Mazzagatte was born in California in 1990, and raised in La Puente, a city in East Los Angeles County. Her portraiture often carries a theme of grief and tension, drawing from her own life experience. Breana was adopted at the age of five and lost both of her parents in 2018.

Her series “Bleed For Me” was featured in Monster Children’s 2022 annual and displayed in shows across Los Angeles. Since, she was a featured photographer in Leica Camera’s SL3 campaign and published by magazines and photo blogs like Coveteur, Arlette, and Insomnia.

Awards 2025 - finalist - Women’s Street Photography New York Exhibition, shown at Artspace PS109

2025 - finalist - Lensculture Portrait Awards