InscribedLeft image: On sheet recto, bottom, in black pen: "1st Beauty Composite";
Right image: On sheet recto, bottom, in black pen: "2nd Beauty Composite".
MarkingsLeft Image:On sheet verso, center, in pencil: "J135 / 12A";
On sheet verso, bottom, in pencil: "ENB50a".
Right Image:On sheet verso, center, in pencil: "H850 / 7";
On sheet verso, bottom, in pencil: "ENB50b".
DescriptionDiptych, composed of two individual photographs, each of a woman's face that is softly focused.Gallery Label
Years before the advent of Photoshop and decades before
generative AI, Nancy Burson combined photography and computing to create
fictional faces. Assisted by engineers and computer scientists, her
computer-generated “Composites” explore the ever-shifting terrain of cultural
expectations for beauty, age, gender, and race.
They contrast standards of feminine beauty from the 1950s
(left) with those of the early 1980s (right). The resulting images present
visual averages that are unreal, yet strangely familiar. The image on the left
combines individual photographs of movie stars of the 1950s: Bette Davis,
Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren, and Marilyn Monroe. The right unites
portraits of Jane Fonda, Jacqueline Bisset, Diane Keaton, Brooke Shields, and
Meryl Streep.
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