whenever I put any three of the five together, I arrive at very nearly the same typical face.[1]
The process is one of pictorial statistics, suitable to give us generic pictures of man, such as Quetelet obtained in outline by the ordinary numerical methods of statistics, as described in his work on "Anthropométrie." He procured the measurements of the limbs of a large number of person of both sexes and of various ages, and of the distances between such points on the surface of the body as are sufficiently defined to measure from. From these numerical data he calculated and laid down upon paper the average positions of those points, and therefrom constructed sketches of the typical man at various periods of his growth, like Flaxman's drawings or Retsch's outlines. By the process of composites we obtain a picture and not a mere outline. It is blurred, something like a damp sketch, and the breadth of the blur measures the variability of individuals from the central typical form.
It may be objected that the contribution from each portrait, when there is a multitude of them, is so small that, in the great majority of cases, it might perhaps leave no trace at all in the generic portrait, or, at all events, on the photograph; consequently, that the result may not be what it professes, but is, perhaps, due to a comparatively small portion of the components, in which the lights and shades happen to be sufficiently marked to create a decided impression. I therefore tried a simple experiment, which leaves no doubt that this objection is unfounded under even very exceptional circumstances, so far as the photographs are concerned, and, therefore, a fortiori, as regards composite results by purely optical means. I contrived a small apparatus to be held in one hand. It had a receptacle behind for sensitized paper, in front of which was a hole closed by a shutter, that sprang back when I pressed my finger on a catch, and closed at the moment that I released the pressure. In the other hand I held a chronograph, in which the hand that marked quarter-seconds began to travel the instant I pressed a catch, and stopped when I released it. I worked these two instruments simultaneously, holding one in each hand. The chronograph readings gave me the sum of the successive short periods of exposure of the sensitized paper, and I could watch the length of each of them. Thus provided, I made several experiments, and can testify to the identity of the tint made by one thousand short exposures with that made by a single exposure of the same length of time as all the thousand put together. What differences there were, lay well within the limits of error in experimenting.
Composite portraits are, therefore, much more than averages, because they include the features of every individual of whom they are composed. They are the pictorial equivalents of those elaborate sta-
- ↑ I exhibited many photographic composites at the Royal Institution on the 25th of April. Some were transparencies thrown upon a screen, others were made before the audience by converging magic lanterns.
