Composite Portraits

Composite Portraits

Bowditch, H. P. (Henry Pickering), 1840-1911

Eugenics

Composite photographs

An arrangement of composite portraits by Henry Pickering Bowditch (1840-1911) in the publication from the second International Exhibition of Eugenics in 1921. While the composite photographs on display here as well as others in the collections of the Countway were created by physiologist Henry Pickering Bowditch, the development and original interpretation of the composite process with its eugenic implications was the work of Sir Francis Galton, who first published his research as “Composite portraits,” in Nature in 1878. Galton said, “The photographic process of which I there spoke, enables us to obtain with mechanical precision a generalised picture; one that represents no man in particular, but portrays an imaginary figure, possessing the average features of any given group of men. These ideal faces have a surprising air of reality. Nobody who glanced at one of them for the first time, would doubt its being the likeness of a living person. Yet, as I have said, it is no such thing; it is the portrait of a type, and not of an individual.”

Two page spread about composite portraits from the publication of the second International Exhibition of Eugenics

Bowditch, H. P. (Henry Pickering), 1840-1911

Williams & Wilkins Company

1923

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Boston Medical Library Rare Books Collection (2.Am.205)

image

excerpt (2 pages)

English

still image

0001955

From the Collections of the Boston Medical Library