The Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1885-1886, 1886-09-15
A COMPOSITE PORTRAIT.
A COLLECTIVE LIKENESS OF TwEN-
fY YOUNG COLLEGE GIRLS.

~ fOUNG COGIEGE GfitLS.
Interesting Results Obtained by Means
of an Extraordinary Neutrality-suspicious.
tbin:. Fascinating to the Imagination.
Aaorat.oa of Photographer.
Before me stands cabinet photograph of
youn. girl, with clear and thoughtful eyes,
dark hair and eyebrows, oval face, straight
nose, and weIt-rounded chin An who see it
are attracted by it, vet the universe would be
vainly searched fer the original in woman's
form 1t is one of those wonders of recent
art known a, composite portraits" it does
not represent one perz On, but twenty; it is
the eoIlcctive likeness Of twenty Young girls
one whole section of the senior class of a
wonan's college in NJ 7achusetts
remember that WI, ] Mr. Francis Cation,
the crisiaaterof this Extraordinary invention,
gave mo in London eight years ago, some ex-
planation OF his project it seemed to me as
astounding as il 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 photographins them successively upon
a prepared plate, to eliminate and omit what
ever was individual in each, preserving only
what they had in common, the pure type, or
family look. Succeeding in this, the art has
been carried much farther, being next applied
to men of like pursuits, extracting from a
dozen mathematician, for instance, the char
acteristic mathematical face, whatever il is
from a dozen philologists the face that marks
the student Of language so on.
PERrETuATIoN OF YOUTH AND BEAUTY.
Many such typical faces have been engraved
i'll scientific journals but it is only lately that
the process has been applied to the pef'pctua
ton of youth and beauty, or to that substi-
tutc for beauty which youth puts into every
womans face When we have. in addition,
the type of intellect represented in higher
st;I;lics the result becomes doubly interesting
Ever since T.unyson wrote his princess" the
newspapers have been quoting his pleasing
ALTERATION of the sweet girl graduates" but
the girl graduate herself has never been pho
tograplgd III collective unity before. Yet
here She stauis.
The process is not 81 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
i nnrr direct, and gives the better reircsen-
tatiOu; hat the latter has the advantage of
excluding all motion in the sitter, and there
fore ctiect!ilg Il surcr result A photo raph
plate is prepared for what is calici the long
process aud is TO b. exposed PERHAPS for an
l..
in succession, we viii say, twenty pho
toGraphs of young girls For each of these
twenty can he allowed three minutes
making sixty in all; 81 that it is as if one sat
for three minutes to be photographed, then
another, then another, all being thus finally
represented on the same plate, and each modi-
fN luss the ll,icamCntsS previously taken. The
result is that al the end You obtain the av-
craGe or typical face of the whole twenty. j.
is of course necessary to fix each face at the
slime centre, this being usually or always
taken at the point between the eyes; and
hence there is always 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 50 salts
factory Is the eyes and brow; but in that to-
fore me even the chin is well defined, and a
youthful roundlicss. 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 little
hay look about it, as if it might he taken
from a crayon drawing
FASCINATING THE IMAGINATION
There is something very fascinating to the
imagination about composite portrait. 1t
is a linl; between the real and the ideal, the
photographer cnnIlating with more precision
the constructive imagination of the painter.
Rtlskin used to laugh at artists who tried to
put upon their canvas some four-legged crea-
ture that should he the generalization between
Il pony aIid n 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 inprcssively worked
out by Milton, in one of his Latin poems, Of
PlatohS archetrpal man, the grand ileal of
the humln 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 phantnIn; CT among the conceptions of one
Of our most imaginative younger writers,
Edward Be,lamy, who III Miss Ludington's
Sister fancies an elderly woman as believing
in the immortality of her past self, and us
finally obtaining through spiritual medium
the materializel image of herself at eighteen
"a young creature whom she adopts as I.
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 vet
not herself; it is herself modified in face, rs
she really is more or less in character, by the
compromising of all the rest; il represents
their common life, and will ever remain With
them as tho image of their collective youth
But how hopeless the position of some modern
Pygmalion, turned photographer, and falling
in love with the goddess of his own creation?
There would no longer, 20 be sure, be any
difficulty i'll warming her into life; the trouble
is that when made alive she would not be one
wolu;Iu, but twenty, and the alteration Of tho
endnorrd artist would have 10 he SO sub
divided as to be scarcely worth receiving.
ct, W. IL. i'll Harpers Bazaar
Eitcnvcry Of the ''knock-Gut" Blow.
Excuse my ignorance, colonel, but what is