Our Faces, Our Selves
Self portraits via the police Identi-Kit
by Giles Revell, Matt Willey and Matthew McKinnon
Simon Chan, Amateur boxer:
I know what i look like without having a mirror. I know my hair, the shape of my head, my jawline, the general shape of my face, and all that stuff. I have a pretty strong image of that in my own mind.
Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to box. I've been fascinated with the red and blue corners and the red and blue gloves. Still, for me the number one thing is to be safe, just to protect myself. That's why I have such mixed feelings about the sport. I actually don't enjoy hurting somebody else. I don't want to give someone brain damage. That's something I've been struggling with forever.
I've really only been punched in the face once, and that was in training. I saw a flash of red. The punch broke my nose. I've been healing for a year and a half. Appearance is one thing, but if my nose got broken like it is now and I could still breathe out of it properly, I don't think I would worry about it too much. But for months after I broke my nose, I couldn't breathe properly, and I was getting concerned. I considered repair work. If it was something like that — if I had missing teeth and couldn't chew my food, if I broke my nose and couldn't breathe, if my nose or face got really disfigured — then I'd consider doing something about it.
Everyone's face evolves. I've got this wicked scar on my nose that I really like. A few years ago, on a trip to Montreal with all my crazy friends, we were at Phillipé's bar. I remember making a toast with Avery. Our glasses clashed and one broke. A piece of glass cut me right on the nose. Blood was gushing everywhere. So I have a pretty big scar on it. The face shows the war
The use of composite drawings based on eyewitness accounts for identifying criminals has its origins in the nineteenth century, but the first commercially available system — one not dependent upon the skills of trained forensic artists — was Identi-Kit, introduced by the Townsend Corporation in the US in 1959.
The original Identi-Kit consisted of a series of transparent cards, or foils, on which different types of facial features and accessories were drawn, arranged in a simple wooden box. To assemble a likeness to descriptions provided by witnesses, a police officer or witness would have a broad variety of eyes, noses, lips, ears, foreheads, jaws, and so forth to mix and match, one on top of the other. After the system was purchased in the late 1960s by the legendary gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson, a new version of Identi-Kit emerged that used photographic foils to render the choice of features more precise and realistic. More recently, mechanical composite drawing kits like Identi-Kit have been replaced by specially designed software.
The version of Identi-Kit used in the current project has photographic foils and was used by the rcmp beginning in 1976. The severe limitations of this method of creating composites for identifying criminals is evident. The forty or so types of each individual feature in the kit have little hope of reflecting the infinite nuances of the human face, and indeed research suggests that Identi-Kit makes it more difficult for witnesses to identify criminals. (Today the
rcmp relies on sketches by trained forensic artists.) But when applied to oneself in the form of a self-portrait, it can be revealing of the way a person sees his or her self and appearance.
BONUS: View five more Identi-Kit portraits in our
online-only gallery.
Twelve Canadians were photographed, asked to construct self-portraits using Identi-Kit, and then interviewed about their experiences of the process and themselves. The result is a study in the complexity and conflictedness of identity, of the subtle disjunctions between how we look from the outside and how we think of ourselves from the inside.
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Francesco Sinibaldi: An evidence for you.
When everything
shines in the
light of October
there's a beautiful
seaside, and a
careful watcher: the
sun fades away,
and even a
strange man
arrives near a
fountain.
Francesco Sinibaldi September 20, 2008 12:29 EST