Facial Recognition and Profiling

Phrenology and Physiognomy were two pseudo-sciences that caught on in a big way from the 17th-19th centuries. I won't go into details here but provide some links for you below.

 

Physiognomy was the older form that regarded human beauty or ugliness to have implications for behaviour. In other words people of certain appearance were profiled as "criminal types", etc. Phrenology studied the bumps on skulls and from that supposedly deduced certain psychological attributes. Once again the effect of this pseudo-science was to profile people.

 

Now in this piece of conceptual art I am posing a question: What if modern surveillance techniques like facial recognition technology and psychological profiling are merely more sophisticated forms of putting people in boxes?

 

Don't we still tend to judge people by their physical attributes and thus "profile" them as societal threats or not?

 

Phrenology

www.verywellmind.com/what-is-phrenology-2795251

Physiognomy

blogs.getty.edu/iris/physiognomy-the-beautiful-pseudoscie...

 

 

* All photographs taken with the Nikon D850.

 

 

Done