the aid of a computer. In 1976, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s Architecture Machine
Group (today the MIT Media Laboratory) adopted
Burson’s project. However, it would take several
years for the technology to advance in order for
Burson and her collaborators to realizeThe Age
Machine. In 1981, the artist and engineer Thomas
Schneider jointly received a patent for ‘‘The Method
and Apparatus for Producing an Image of a Person’s
Face at a Different Age,’’ which has been subse-
quently used by the United States government,
including the FBI, to locate missing children based
on the computer-generated photographs of what
they would look like if they had been ‘‘aged.’’ Reflec-
tive of her ongoing investigations about the self and
the myriad representations of identity, sameness,
and difference, Burson continued to refine the tech-
nology with the aid of computer scientists David
Kramlich and Richard Carling. In 1990, Kramlich
and Burson presentedThe Age Machineat MIT, an
interactive computer station whereby a viewer could
sit at a console and scan an image of his or her face,
input some data, and within seconds the machine
would create a speculative portrait of the sitter 25
years in the future.
Burson relied on this collaboration to create a
number of arresting ‘‘portraits,’’ or composite pic-
tures in which the structure or features of numerous
individuals are blended in the creation of a hybrid, a
person who only exists in fantasy or virtual reality.
Examples of these include a series ofUntitledcolor
Polaroids of subjects whose warped features appear
partly human, partly alien. Other composites that
meld faces of different races, ages, and sexes, as well
as media images of celebrities and politicians, result
in sometimes eerie, sometimes humorous visages that
blur the line between the universal and the particular,
self and other. Although some viewers might inter-
pret Burson’s composites as simply bizarre or voy-
euristic—fodder for a circus sideshow—the artist
believes that they represent a relevant curiosity
about identity, selfhood, and the truth of the photo-
graph. According to curator Dana Friis-Hansen,
‘‘plotting gut instincts about the self and human
nature against the mechanics and metaphors of tech-
nology led Burson to her considerable achievement: a
humanizing technology’’ (Friis-Hansen, 1990, 8).
Moreover, her work reveals connections not only
to the massive history of portraiture but to the his-
tory of physiognomy (the study of personality traits
baseduponfacialcharacteristics), aswellasphrenol-
ogy, a nineteenth-century pseudoscience that pur-
ported to establish links between cranial and facial
structure and intelligence and racial superiority.
While Burson’s composites engage with or perhaps
echo this history, they do not claim to define or make
statements about the aforementioned races or
‘‘types’’ as her historical antecedents did. Rather,
Burson is drawn to the question of whether seeing
can be equated with believing and whether visual
perception can effectively communicate reality.
Never one to assume that seeingissimply believing,
Burson’s photography has continually sought to
explore the imagistic, the psychological, and the
spiritual aspects of the visual world.
After spending approximately 15 years on the
forefront of digital and computer technology in
order to create her fantastical faces, Burson then
turned to a more traditional approach to the med-
ium. She began shooting ‘‘straight’’ portraits of
subjects—adults and children—whose faces were
deformed by various diseases such as cancer or
genetic abnormalities. In effect the photographer
turned from digitally altered faces to those that
had been biologically altered, if not permanently
marred. Burson explained that her interest in
photographing children with Apert syndrome and
other craniofacial disorders was spurred by her own
pregnancy in 1989. Preoccupied with the possibility
of genetic deformities, as a prelude to the straight
works, she began to produce composite ‘‘portraits’’
based on images she found in medical casebooks.
TheseUntitledimages from the late 1980s are meant
to be read as ambiguous representations of genetic
disorder based on multiple images, rather than a
specific individual visage. When she turned to flesh
and blood rather than virtual subjects, the photo-
grapher reexamined the blurry notion of photo-
graphic truth (essentially asking, ‘‘Does the
camera lie?’’) but also forced the viewer to recognize
his or her preconceived notions about Burson’s
difficult subjects. The result is that the viewer is
caught up in the artist’s own vision as the camera
captures the sometimes stark and grotesque faces of
the deformed.
Apert syndrome, an extremely rare and random
genetic disorder, affects and deforms the bones of
one’s head, hands, and feet. Subjects with the
syndrome often have overly tall or asymmetrical
skulls, sunken features, and webbed hands and
feet. Burson’s first subject of this kind was Natha-
niel, the young son of a friend, Jeanne McDer-
mott. One mother’s painful recognition that the
world might never accept her son based on his
appearance spurred McDermott to ask Burson to
photograph him. She desired other people to see a
different vision of her beloved child, one in which
his humanity would connect rather than differ-
entiate him from others. McDermott wrote in
Nancy Burson: Faces:BURSON, NANCY