D&AD

Hans Weishäupl’s book presents the 13 cruellest and most infamous dictators of the last century as they were never been seen before: naked, uncensored, close-up and vulnerable. The portraits were created from separate photographs of over 350 people from the countries that suffered under their dictatorial regimes. But what do these composites demonstrate? That under the right circumstances, there is, if not a Hitler, a potential accomplice or someone who ‘allows’ dictatorship, in every one of us? At the very least, they show that cruel men were people made of flesh and blood like everybody else. They are not the abstract monsters we try to disguise them as in order to distance ourselves from them. ‘Faces of Evil’ challenges us to deal with the human nature of tyrants, and the fact that many helpers hide behind the head of a dictator.