PHOTOGRAPHS
Burson, Nancy; with Richard Carling and David Kramlich
U.S. (1948 - )
Three Major Races
1982
Gelatin silver print
9 x 8 1/8 in. (22.8 x 20.6 cm) image size;11 x 13 15/16 in. (27.9 x 35.4 cm) sheet size
Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen and The Boeing Company
FA 97.32

Nancy Burson made major contributions to computer imaging technology in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She helped develop software that enables law enforcement officials to create facial composites and use them to age existing photographic portraits as an aid in locating missing children. Burson has also been involved with the artistic investigation of human identity and the ways in which individuals recognize others as different from themselves. In this picture she has used computer imaging to create a composite from the faces of three racially distinct people. Burson invites the viewer to bring his or her preconceptions about what each race looks like and attempt to disentangle the features belonging to each. This task is made deliberately difficult. When viewers fail to accurately categorize the facial features, the artist succeeds both in reminding them the extent to which they have internalized popular assumptions about racial difference and that these assumptions ultimately fail. She summarizes, “My goal is to emphasize the commonality of people rather than their differences or separateness.” -- Label copy for The Photographic Impulse: Selections from the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, July 12 to November 10, 2002.

In this picture Burson has used computer imaging to create a composite from the faces of three racially distinct people. Burson invites the viewer to bring his or her preconceptions about what each race looks like and attempt to disentangle the features belonging to each. This task is made deliberately difficult. When viewers fail to accurately categorize the facial features, the artist succeeds both in reminding them of the extent to which they have internalized popular assumptions about racial difference and that these assumptions ultimately fail. She summarizes, “My goal is to emphasize the commonality of people rather than their differences or separateness.”
Excerpt from the extended label for The Photographic Impulse: A Critical History of Photography, The Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection. Henry Art Gallery, July 12 – November 10, 2002. -- Label for Vortexhibition Polyphonica: Opus I, October 3, 2009, to February 9, 2010.


Nancy Burson worked in the late 1970s with scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop software that synthetically aged a human face, a technology that law enforcement officials subsequently used to locate missing children and adults. In 1982, Burson became one of the earliest artists to use the computer when she put this practice to use in her personal work. To produce this composite titled Mankind, Burson weighted the image density of a portrait of a Caucasian, an Asian, and a Black male according to population statistics of the time. By providing hybrid faces that look both vaguely familiar and alien, Burson’s art has been viewed as a critique of the homogenization of appearances and identity in the modern world. -- Label copy for The Digital Eye: Photographic Art in the Electronic Age, July 9 to September 25, 2011.