page_title: Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine / Overview
caption_attribution_description: English: Image from Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine, ou, Analyse électro-physiologique de l’expression des passions, 1862, by Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne (1806-1875). TypPh 815.62.3402 (A), Houghton Library, Harvard University
context_page_description: Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine. ou, Analyse électro-physiologique de l'expression des passions des arts plastiques. is a monograph on the muscles of facial expression, researched and written by Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne. It first appeared as an abstract published in Archives générales de médecine in 1862 and was then published in three formats: two octavo editions and one quarto edition. The work was an important resource used by Charles Darwin for his own study on the genetics of behaviour, entitled The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, but in recent years it has been reclaimed as an important landmark in the history of the photographic arts.
context_section_description: Influenced by the fashionable beliefs of Physiognomy of the 19th century, Duchenne wanted to determine how the muscles in the human face produce facial expressions which he believed to be directly linked to the soul of man. He is known, in particular, for the way he triggered muscular contractions with electrical probes, recording the resulting distorted and often grotesque expressions with the recently invented camera. He published his findings during 1862, together with extraordinary photographs of the induced expressions, in the book The Mechanism of Human Physiognomy (Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine). 
  Like physiognomists and phrenologists before him, Duchenne believed that the human face was a map the features of which could be codified into universal taxonomies of inner states; he was convinced that the expressions of the human face were a gateway to the soul of man. Unlike Lavater and other physiognomists of the era, Duchenne was skeptical of the face's ability to express moral character; rather he was convinced that it was through a reading of the expressions alone (known as pathognomy) which could reveal an "accurate rendering of the soul's emotions". He believed that he could observe and capture an  "idealized naturalism" in a similar (and even improved) way to that observed in Greek art. It is these notions that he sought conclusively and scientifically to chart by his experiments and photography and it led to the publishing of The Mechanism of Human Physiognomy during 1862 (also entitled, The Electro-Physiological Analysis of the Expression of the Passions, Applicable to the Practice of the Plastic Arts. in French: Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine, ou Analyse électro-physiologique de l'expression des passions applicable à la pratique des arts plastiques). The work compromises a volume of text divided into three parts:
  General considerations
  A scientific section
  An aesthetic section
  These sections were accompanied by an atlas of photographic plates. Believing that he was investigating a God-given language of facial signs, Duchenne writes: 
  In the face our creator was not concerned with mechanical necessity. 
  He was able in his wisdom or – please pardon this manner of speaking – in pursuing a divine fantasy … to put any particular muscles into action, one alone or several muscles together, when He wished the characteristic signs of the emotions, even the most fleeting, to be written briefly on man's face. Once this language of facial expression was created, it sufficed for Him to give all human beings the instinctive faculty of always expressing their sentiments by contracting the same muscles. 
  This rendered the language universal and immutable 
  Duchenne defines the fundamental expressive gestures of the human face and associates each with a specific facial muscle or muscle group. He identifies thirteen primary emotions the expression of which is controlled by one or two muscles. He also isolates the precise contractions that result in each expression and separates them into two categories: partial and combined. To stimulate the facial muscles and capture these "idealized" expressions of his patients, Duchenne applied faradic shock through electrified metal probes pressed upon the surface of the various muscles of the face. 
  Duchenne was convinced that the "truth" of his pathognomic experiments could only be effectively rendered by photography, the subject's expressions being too fleeting to be drawn or painted. "Only photography," he writes, "as truthful as a mirror, could attain such desirable perfection." He worked with a talented, young photographer, Adrian Tournachon, (the brother of Felix Nadar), and also taught himself the art in order to document his experiments. From an art-historical point of view, the Mechanism of Human Physiognomy was the first publication on the expression of human emotions to be illustrated with actual photographs. Photography had only been invented recently, and there was a widespread belief that this was a medium that could capture the "truth" of any situation in a way t
caption: Duchenne patient, photo from Houghton Library, Harvard University TypPh 815.62.3402 (A)
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