迷失面孔的製圖師 A cartographer of lost faces
Jane traced the outlines of the faded lips, the shadows of her eyes, the soft edges of her hair bleeding into the background. The image was unsettling, yet familiar, like the ghost of a face she should have known.
2025.02.11
珍是一位迷失面孔的製圖師。她不是傳統意義上的地圖製作者，而是一名編織模糊與破碎身份的編年者，穿梭於時間、記憶與遺忘之間。她的天賦——或者詛咒——是能夠看見藏在一個人臉龐之下的層次，那些被歲月壓抑的過去自我，被時間侵蝕而逐漸消失的神情回音。
她在遺忘肖像的檔案館工作，那是一個影像在被記住之前便已褪色的地方。被遺棄的照片、損毀的數位檔案、印刷錯誤的畫布，在這裡低聲細語，渴望被看見、被重新拼湊。有些面孔被粗心的手指抹去，有些因技術故障而模糊不清，但它們都承載著渴望解開的故事。
某天，珍發現了一幅奇特的肖像。畫中女子既未完全成形，也未完全消失——她的臉在清晰與消解之間閃爍，彷彿被困在兩種存在狀態之間。珍沿著那逐漸淡去的雙唇輪廓、眼神的陰影、柔和髮絲與背景融合的邊界細細追尋。這張影像令人不安，卻又熟悉，如同她應該認識的臉龐幽靈。
當珍伸出手，那幅肖像竟然開始變化。模糊的輪廓波動起來，彷彿霧氣正在重新塑形。畫中女子現在正凝視著她。不僅是一張照片，而是一種存在，一個曾經真實存在卻早已被時間吞噬的片段。
珍屏住呼吸。這位女子是在等待被記住，還是她在警告珍相同的命運——逐漸消逝，成為檔案館中另一個被遺忘的模糊身份？
或許珍不只是製圖師。或許，她本身就是地圖的一部分，逐漸溶解於她那拼命想要拯救的故事之中。
Jane was a cartographer of lost faces. Not a maker of maps in the traditional sense, but a weaver of the blurred and fractured identities that flickered between time, memory, and erasure. Her gift—or curse—was the ability to see the layers beneath a person’s visage, the past selves buried under the weight of years, the echoes of expressions lost to the erosion of time.
She worked in the archive of forgotten portraits, a place where images faded before they had a chance to be remembered. Here, discarded photographs, corrupted digital files, and misprinted canvases whispered to her, asking to be seen, to be pieced back together. Some faces had been smudged by careless hands, others blurred by failing technology, yet all carried stories that longed to be unraveled.
One day, Jane came across a peculiar portrait. The woman in the image was neither fully formed nor entirely lost—her face flickered between clarity and dissolution, as if caught between two existences. Jane traced the outlines of the faded lips, the shadows of her eyes, the soft edges of her hair bleeding into the background. The image was unsettling, yet familiar, like the ghost of a face she should have known.
As Jane reached out, the portrait shifted. The blurred features rippled, reforming like mist taking shape. The woman in the image was watching her now. Not just a picture, but a presence. A fragment of someone who had once been real but had long since been swallowed by time.
Jane inhaled sharply. Was this woman waiting to be remembered? Or was she warning Jane of the same fate—of slipping away, becoming another blurred identity in the archive of the forgotten?
Perhaps Jane wasn’t just a cartographer. Perhaps she was a part of the map itself, slowly dissolving into the stories she so desperately tried to save.
