The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1886-10-29
WHO'D E NO. 9O3.
A COMPOSITE PORTRAIT.
A COLLECTIVE LIKENESS OF TWEEN
TY YOUNG COLLEGE GIRLS.

Interesting Results Obtained by Means
of an Extraordinary Invention-Some-
thing Fascinating to the Imagination.
Alteration of a Photographer.
Before Before fffe stands Is photograph Of
young girl, with clear and thoughtful eyes,
dark hair and eyebrows, oval face, straight
nose, and well-rounded chin All who see it
are attracted by it, yet the universe would be
vainly searched for the original in Woman's
form. 1t is one of those wonders of recent
art known as composite portraits" it does
~notFepresent one person, but twenty; it Is
the collective likeness of twenty young girls
one whole section of the senior class OF
womans college in Massachusetts,.
Iremember that when Mr.. Francis Galton
the originator of this extraordinary invention,
gave me in London, eight years ago, some ex-
planation of his project, it seemed to me as
astounding as if he had promised to photo
graph the unspoken thoughts of the human
mind. 1t grew, believe, out of his studies in
that Hereditary Descent" on which he has
written book so interesting. His first aim
was to take several faces of the same family,
presumably possessing something in common.
and, by photographing them successively upon
prepared plate, to eliminate and omit what
ever was individual in each, preserving only
what they had in common, the pure type, OF
family look. Succeeding in this, the art has
been carried much farther, being next applied
to men of like pursuits, extracting from
dozen mathematicians, for instance, the char
acteristic mathematical face, whatever it is
from dozen philologists the face that marks
the student of flanguage-and SO on.
PERPETUATIoN OF YOUTH AND BEAUTY.
Many such typical faces have been engraved
in scientific journals, but it is only lately that
the process has been applied to the perpetual
tion of youth and beauty, or to that substi-
tute for beauty which youth puts into every
woman's face When we have, in addition,
the type of intellect represented in higher
studies, the result becomes doubly interesting.
Ever since Tennyson wrote his Princes" the
newspapers have been quoting his pleasing
ALTERATION of the asweet girl graduates" but
the girl graduate herself has never been pho
tographed in collective unity before. Yet
here she stands.
The process is not so magical as it seems,
and the composite portrait can be made either
from the separate living faces or from pho
tographs previously taken. The former course
is more direct, and gives the better represen-
tation; but the latter has the advantage of
excluding all motion in the sitter, and there
fore effecting surer result. A photograph
plate is prepared for what is called the 'long
process" and is to be exposed perhaps for an
hour. On this plate are to be photographed
in succession, we will say, twenty pho
tographs of young girls. For each of these
twenty can be allowed three minutes
making sixty in all; SO that 1t is as IL one sat
for three minutes to be photographed, then
another, then another, all being thus finally
represented on the same plate, and each modi-
flying the lineaments previously taken. The
result is that at the end you obtain the av
erage or typical face of the whole twenty. 1t
is of course necessary to fix each face at the
same centre, this being usually or always
taken at the point between the eyes; and
hence there is always q little less sharpness
and precision about the lower part of the
face. For this reason the mouth and chin of
composite portrait are rarely quite so salts
factory as the eyes and brow; bat in that be-
fore me even the chin is well defined, and of
youthful roundness No one who has not
previously heard of the new discovery doubts
its being the likeness of an individual person,
though observers are apt to remark a little
hazy look about it, as if it might be taken
from a crayon drawing.
FASCINATING THE IMAGINATION,
There is something very fascinating to the
imagination about q composite portrait. 1t
is a link between the real and the ideal, the
photographer emulating with more precision
the constructive imagination of the painter.
Ruskin used to laugh at artists who tried tG
put upon their canvas some four-legged creas
ture that should be the generalization between
pony and pig; yet here is Il generalization
between Mary and Charlotte, between Kate
and Caroline. It carries us into a world of
dreams; into "Plato's Theory of IDEAS" OF
that fine conception SO impressively worked
out by Milton, in one of his Latin poems, of
Plato's archetypal man, the"grand ideal OF
the human race, coeval with the stars, and
dwelling among them, or pacing the regions
of the earth yet unexplored by actual men
and women Or it takes us into Poe's worlds
of phantom; or among the conceptions of one
of our most imaginative younger writers,
Edward Bellamy, who in Miss Ludington's
Sister" fancies an elderly woman as believing
in the Immortality of her past self, and as
finally obtaining through spiritual medium
the materialized image of herself at eighteen
"a young creature whom she adopts as a
sister, .-.
So is this pretty portrait the more than
twin sister Of each of these twenty young
girls: for each of them it is herself and yet
not herself; it is herself modified in face, as
she really is more or less in character, by the
companionship OF all the rest; it represents
their common life, and will ever remain with
them as the image of their collective youth.
But how hopeless the position of some modern
Pyglaalion, turned photographer, and falling
in love with the goddess of his own creations
There would no longer, to be sure, be any
difficulty in warming her into life; the trouble
is that when made alive she would not be one
woman, but twenty, and the alteration of the
enamored artist would have to be so sub
divided as to be scarcely worth receiving
"T. w. H." in Haiper's Bazaar.