Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1886-08-14
'7-77---1 - -
ANUIENIIFIC TRIUMpH.
Ono Wonderful Collective Likeness OF Twenty
Young College Girls.

Ono Wonderful Collective Likeness OF Twenty
Young College Girls.
1T W. H." IN Harper's Bazar.
Before mo stands cabinet photograph OF q
young girl, with clear and thoughtful eyes,
dark hair and eyebrows, oval face, straight
nose and well-rounded chin. All who sec 1t
are attracted by II, yet the universe would he
valnly searched for the original In woman's
form. 1t Is one Of those wonders OF recent
art known as "composte portraits;" IL does
not represent one person, but twenty; 1t Is the
collective likeness of twenty young girls-one
whole section OF the senior class OF a woman's
college In Massachusetts,.
remember that when Mr.. Francis Galton,
the originator of this extraordinary inven-
tion, gave me in London, eight years ago,
some explanation OF his project, II seemed TO
me as astounding as II he had promised to
photograph the unspoken thoughts of the
human mind. II grew, believe, out of his
studies In that "HeredItary Descent" on
which no has written q book so interesting.
His first aim was to take several faces of the
same iamily, presumably possessing some
thing in common, and, by photographing
them successfully upon prepared plate, to
eliminate and omit whatever was individual
in each, preserving only what they had In
common, the pure type and family look.
Succeeding In this, the art has been carried
HluCn btltR dpplcd W nun VI
like pursuits, extracting from dozen mathe-
maticians, for instance, the characteristic
mathematical face, whatever 1t is-from a
dozen philologists the face that marks the
student OF language and so on.
Many such typical faces have been en-
graved in scientific journals, but 1t Is only
lately that the process has been applied to
the perpetuatIon of youth and beauty, or to
that substitute for beauty which youth puts
into every woman's face When we have, In
aH ha 10 IA al iptpila.t rapFeSantpI in
higher studies, the result becomes doubly in
teresting. Ever since Tennyson wrote his
"Princess" the newspapers have been quot
ing his pleasing ALTERATION OF the ''sweet girl
graduates" but the girl graduate herself has
never been photographed 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 photo
graphs previously taken. The iormercourse
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 eiiecting surer result photograph
plate IL prepared for what Is called the "iong
process" and Is to be exposed perhaps for All
nour. On this plate are TO be rephotographed
in succession, we will say, twenty photo
graphs of young girls. For each of these
twenty eau be allowed three minutes, making
sixty in all; so that it is as if one sat for three
minutes TO be photographed, then another,
then aDo ther, all being thus finally repre-
sented on the same plate, and each modlfy-
ing tho lineaments previously taken. The
result is that at the end you obtain the ave-
rage 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 a little less sharpness
and precision about the lower part OF the face.
For this reason the mouth and chin OF COM
posite portrait are rarely quite SO satisfactory
rs the eyes and brow; but in that before me
even the chin is well defined, and OF a youth
ful roundneGs. No one who has not pre-
viously heard the new discovery doubts Its
being the likeness of an individual person,
though observers are apt To remark little
hazy look about 1t, as II 1t might be taken from
r crayon drawing.
There Is something very fascinating TO the
Imagination about a composite portrait 1t
is q 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 to
put upon their canvas some four-legged crea.
ture that should be the generalization between
pony and a pig yet here Is generalization
between Mary and Charlotte, between kate
and Caroline. 1t carries us into world OF
dreams into " Plato's Theory of Ideas" or
that fine conception so impressively worked
ont by Milton, in one OF his Latin poems, OF
Plato's archetypal man, the grand ideal OF
the human race, coeval with the stars, ana
dwelling among them or pacing the regions
of the earth yet uneNplored 10y actual men
| and women. OR 1t 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 s
| Sister iaucies an elderly woman as believ-
| ing in the Immortality OF her past sell, and
| rs finally obtaining through a spiritual me-
| dium the materialized image OF herself at
| eighteen-a young creature whom she adopts
| as n sister.
So is this pretty portrait the more than
| twin sister of each Of these twenty young
| girls for each of them 1t is herself, and yet
| not herself it is herself modified in face, as
she really is more or less in character, by
the ecompanionship Of all the rest it repre-
sents their common life, and will ever re-
| main with them as the image OF their col
lective youth. But how hopeless the posi-
| ton of some modern Pygmalion, turned
| photographer, and falling in love with the
| goddess OF his own creation There would no
longer, to be sure, be any difficulty in warm
| ing her into lite the trouble is that when
made alive she would not be one woman, bu,
| twenty and the alteration of the enamored
| artist would have to be so subdivided as TO
| be scarcely worth receiving.