photofit 2

7/29/2019 Photofit 2

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Phooft: Sel-PorraiA projc by Gls Rvll & Mt Wlly

Itrvws by Phlp Oltrmn



Inroducion

Tere are no photos in circulation o Jacques Penry, the man whoinvented the Photot, but rom what he wrote in h is books, you wouldguess that he might have looked a bit suspicious. A photographer by trade, the Frenchman had been ascinated by acial topography asearly as the 1930s, when he published his magnus opus Te Face o Man. Tere was, Penry claimed in it, a direct l ink between any human’sphysique and their personality: philosophers, or example, would showa marked development o the lower cheek muscles, whi le idiots andsimpletons would invariably possess a markedly receding orehead.Following the Penry-method o acial classication, he claimed, onecould cleanse society o “criminals, mental decits, neurasthenicsand vocational mists.”

Perhaps unaware o the supremacist overtones o it’s creator’searly musings, Scotland Yard gave the Photot kit a go in 1970. Tekits come in wooden boxes, containing narrow paper strips withvarious acial eatures and an index list ing the contents: eyes, noses,mouths, haircuts, chins, roughly 40 in each category. Tere are

transparencies or add-ons, such as glasses, acial hairs or wrinkles,and a rame on which the individual parts can be assembled.

Te rst Photot portrait o a British suspect was broadcaston 22nd o October 1970, in connection with the murder o JamesCameron in Islington, London. Surprisingly, it came up with the goods:

the image jogged a shop assistant’s memory and led to the arresto John Earnest Bennett in Nottingham. Soon though, policemenound that Photot portraits o suspects oten looked nothing likethe criminals that were eventually caught: the Penry-method clearly had its l imits. In 1988, the Met introduced computer programmesor acial proling (“E-ts”) and Photot kits across the country werehurled onto rubbish heaps.

Penry’s system might have been inaccurate and ideological ly dubious, but it has qualities that appealed to us when we came up withthis project. Photot is tactile: you can touch the individual parts with your own hands and move them about until things click into place – it’slike creating a puzzle. And it is immediate: there is no person standingbetween you and the nal picture. We managed to track down a maleand emale kit rom a Police Museum in Kent and invited a numbero people to assemble their own Photot sel-portrait in Giles’ studioin Clerkenwell. Te end result, we think, is curious. Each portrait tellsa story: it speaks o the hang-ups, insecurities and vanities we all have

about our own appearance. Tey hint at how deceptive our relationshipwith our sel-image can be. Jacques Penry cla imed that he could deducea person’s character rom their ace in an instant. I nothing else, wehope that this project shows how the connection between personaand personality is a lot more complex than that.

Giles Revell, Matt Willey & Philip Oltermann August 2007



Edmund Davie Modl

For me, it all c licked into place when I ound the pair o eyes wherethe eyebrows joined it the middle. I thought it was interesting doingthis experiment, because you could see how dierent hairstyles aectedthe way you look.

My dad was an optician, and I was his guinea pig. At school,the other kids used to laugh at me and cal l me speccy. Sometimesthey used to call me Jarvis Cocker. One day I was in the queue or theCamden Job Centre, and someone came up to me and said I lookedinteresting. He asked me whether I ancied being a model and gaveme his card. A week later I had my rst audition. I’ve been in advertsor the National Lottery and or McDonalds. I’ve never acted in schoolplays or had any training – I am really a musician, but it’s practically impossible to get paid or that, so I do modelling.

I guess they l ike my geeky looks, but I don’t mind that much. You get used to it.



Anne Parry Pol rtit

I have to admit that I struggled to put together my sel-portrait.I smile a lot, so I nd it hard to visualise my ace looking serious.

I remember these old-style identikits well, because I joined theFacial Imaging eam just as they were phasing them out – nowadayswe use computers to create proles o suspects. It is sti ll a compositesystem, but the dierence is that you can select eatures within the

context o a ace and alter them individually at the witness’s direction,using programmes like Photoshop. I deal with minor to major crimes.Sometimes people have seen the suspect or a split second. Sometimesthe suspect we are trying to identiy has committed raud at hisworkplace and will have had colleagues who saw him or her every d ay.What’s surprising is that people sometimes nd it harder to put thecomposite together i they think they know the ace really well.

Many victims o burglaries are old people. Oten, they canremember someone they met 50 years ago, but not the person whorobbed them six hours beore our interview. In other cases, you getwhat is called ‘weapon ocus’: the victim will ocus on the gun, and

not recall the ace o the robber at all. It’s the same eect as a disguise.I there is something unusual about a ace, people will remember

it. Te problem is that most criminals look perectly normal. My job isnot to create a portrait that is 100% accurate – I just need a likeness,something that makes them recognisable. All I need is one person ina mill ion to recognise the composite – it might just be the that personwho drinks in the same pub as them.

Recognition is a very powerul and complex mechanism in ourbrain. We pick it up right rom birth, but I think we never really understand it ully.



Peer Buler Plat srgo

I don’t look at my ace that oten, so I ound the process o assemblingmy ace quite challenging in the end. I denitely ound that I gotslightly obsessive about it. I am perectionist, and I l ike to get thingsright. So that Bobby Dazzler haircut is a bit irritating.

I do both cosmetic and reconstructive surgery on the ace – butI don’t really see them as two dierent operations, more like two

extremes on the same spectrum.Te statistics or cosmetic surgery are quite phenomenal – there

are massive increases year on year. Sometimes it can have massivepsychological benets. In other cases people think that surgery is thekey that wil l unlock their problem but it isn’t.

I we do reconstructive surgery, we will make sure that wehave photographs in order to know what the person looked like beorehe had the accident. I once had a patient who was involved in quitea severe road trafc accident which had impacted on his cheek, butalso nearly ripped o his nose. We put that all back together in anemergency operation. Only when we looked at old photos aterwards

did we realise that we had given him a stra ighter nose than he usedto have. Luckily he was quite happy with the result in the end.

In roughly a year’s time, I will be the rst surgeon to perorm a ullace transplant in the UK. Te greatest misconception among the generalpublic, and even among some o my colleagues, is that there will be anidentity transer ollowing a acial transplant. It’s the Face/O syndrome:donors are worried that i they donate the acial tissue o a loved one,they might one day run into a stranger walking down the street withtheir partner’s ace. In reality it’s not like that at all: the identity o yourace is dominated by the bone structure and the muscles underneath theskin, rather than the colour or condition o the skin tissue on the surace.

Would I consider plastic surgery mysel? I don’t really mind gettingold, I love lived-in aces. But it all depends on the circumstances: i I hadsevere acial burn, I would certainly consider plastic surgery. Te sadthing or me is that at the moment we are treating acial transplantsas a potential end-o-the-line treatment, something to consider o allother treatments ail. I would suggest that i the rst acial transplantin Britain is successul, we should consider it as the primar y treatment.



Ruh Ryan tqs dlr

I have always hated looking at mysel in the mirror. I hate my nose– I think it looks like the nose o a man, it’s very crooked. I like my eyeswhen I have make-up on, but I can’t bear to look at them when I don’t.My ront teeth are incredibly wonky, and they get wonkier and wonkieras I get older, and I hate them more and more. Tere was a point atwhich I didn’t use to smile because I hated the way in which my teeth

and my nose would move when I smiled. Tere are no pictures o mysel in my mum’s house. I have ripped them all up.

One day I stayed behind late at work and I came across a websitethat listed all the symptoms that I had suered rom all my lie andexplained that my anxieties conormed to a serious medical condition.I was shaking as I read the words. I had spent 15 years o my liewithout realising that I suered rom Body Dysmorphic Disorder.

It’s very difcult to explain BDD, but it messes with yourundamental grasp on reality. You hate to be looked at or ear o repulsing people. It would be like someone trying to tell you that you have ve ngers, when you have always seen our. Everyone is

unhappy to some extent about the way they look – but BDD is ananxiety disorder, and it impacts your whole lie. In spite o the actthat the suicide rates or Body Dysmorphia are higher than thoseor Schizophrenia, ew people have heard o the condition and insome cases this can lead to people not taking t he condition seriously.I would say that in terms o recognition, BDD is where anorexiawas ten years ago. In February 2006 I ounded Te BDD Foundation(www.thebddoundation.org) to raise awareness about BDD and enablepeople to get the help they need.

My wish when I am having bad BDD times is that I just want tolook normal – I don’t want to look like a supermodel. I just want to belike my boyr iend Joe: whip on a pair o jeans on a Saturday morning,walk to the shops and not even think about it.



Mar Crank Chf xtv

I’ve always liked my nose, because that is the only part o my ace thatI actually broke mysel – I practice martial arts – rather than havingbeen broken or stretched by the tumour.

Tey rst discovered the tumour behind my eye when I wasabout 18 months old – up until then, I had been a normal baby, or,as I like to think, an exceptionally good-looking baby. It started around

the eye and then moved across the right part o my ace – eventual ly,the tissue closed up around the eye and they had to surgically removeit. Te tumour speeds up as your hormones go wild during yourteenage years – as you get older, it slows down, but it never really stops.

Generally, I don’t judge people who decide to have surgery, butit should be a choice they make or themselves rather than pressurerom society. I am quite happy with the way I look. By accident I oncelooked into one o those distortion mirrors that double up one side o your ace. I realised what I would have looked like without the tumour,and I actually ound that quite shocking.

Te ancient Greeks had this concept o ‘kalos kai agathos’,

which inerred a link between beauty and goodness, and I eel wehaven’t moved on rom that as much as we should. It’s sad to see thatthe media doesn’t always make the dist inction between how good you look and how good you are. I have a real problem with the way in which people with acial disgurements are underrepresented, orworse, misrepresented in the public – that’s why I am on the Advisory Panel o the charity Changing Faces. Why, or example, is there nonewsreader with a acial d isgurement out there?

Te only time you see people with scars in their aces they arethe baddies. However, my personal hero will always be Danger Mouse,with the patch over his let eye. He carries his disability with real graceand dignity!



Humphrey Oean Portrt ptr

Creating my portrait was easier than I thought it was going to be.Curiously, it’s a very similar process to drawing or painting: it doesn’tall happen at once, but slowly. Sometimes nothing makes sense until you put the hair in.

When I do a portrait I always start with the eyes. Te heartbeatis in the eye. A good portrait should be like an extended conversation,

and when we talk, we look into each other’s eyes. It’s very disconcertingi people look somewhere else while they are talking to you.

What is beauty? I don’t know. I think when something is true,then it is beautiul. ake Rembrandt’s sel-portraits: they use beauty toattract you to the painting, but they are also sl ightly ugly. Tey are atonce completely engaged and detached.

Beauty is such difcult thing to dene: as soon as you start, itvanishes. As a portra it painter, it is my job to nd sympathetic tra itseven in the most despicable person. I don’t want anyone to walk pastmy portraits and eel no emotion.



Beryl BainbridgeWrtr

Putting together your own ace is much easier when you are young.When you’re old, your ace is no longer the same. It’s gone, in a unny sort o way. Tere are bits there, but it’s not the way it used to be. Arethere eatures o mine that have improved with age? No, nothing everchanges or the better. Te wrinkles just arrived – I guess I got morebecause I smoked. Having spots was worse. Te dat thing about aces

is that when you are young, you are never completely satised with theway you look. And that continues right until you get old, and then youlook back at photographs and you think: ‘why on earth did I not thinkthat that was alright?’

I mysel didn’t worry too much about my looks when I was young – I was actually quite condent. I used to ght a lot at school,I was a bit o a boxer. Tey called me ‘ basher’. Tere was a boys’ schoolnext door, and when they made remarks about our looks, I just usedto wade in.

Tere’s one thing I have noticed about aces recently: when yougo away or you are downtown, and you catch a reection o yoursel

in a window, it’s not the same person as at home, in your own mirror.I have asked other people about that, and it’s true. Te image you seein your own mirror is presumably altered by your surroundings. Whilewhen you are out, you don’t have that amiliar space around you and your ace appears quite dierent. You try it.

As a writer, one o the people who have most inuenced mewas Graham Greene, and he very rarely descr ibes anybody’s outerappearance at all. Sometimes when I write, I think God, I should say alittle bit about what they look like. But I nd that when you put wordsin their mouths and you write dialogue, you can sort o see what they look like. Lots o writers overdo descriptions – Dickens, or example,would describe every wart. I think it’s more important to know whatthey are saying than what they look like.



Eamonn MCabe Portrt photogrphr

All portra it photographers ocus on the eyes – when you set up ashoot, you make sure that there is l ight in that part o the ace. Butactually, the hair can be just as important. You get to a point in yourcareer when people know who you are yoursel, so you start to havea shave beore you go on a shoot. Does that make me vain?

I’m not in love with my ace – I think it’s too round and I have

this bald pate. You grow beards to complement the hair missingsomewhere else – it’s a good guise, i not a disguise. I’ve had minesince I was 19. It took me so long to grow that I didn’t shave it o until about seven years ago – I was scared that I couldn’t grow itback again. It took me 6 months to get the shape r ight.

I used to have a ull beard, but I shaved it o one day. Iremember I went into the ofce the next day, and the rst personsaid: ‘Hey, you’ve been growing your sideburns!’. When I grew it backinto a goatee, someone said to me that I looked like a dead ringer orRichard Branson, and I quite liked that. Te next person said, ‘Nah, youlook more like Burl Ives’, and that got real ly under my ribs. I can take

Branson, but Ives really got to me.Men go through phases. I am 50 years old now, and I can’t go backto being a twenty-our-year-old who reads Arena magazine and changeshis hairstyle every week. Te greatest thing I have missed is that I havenever had to use gel – i I see another guy with that sprouting hair look,I’ll scream.

I enjoyed the process o assembling this portrait, even thoughI am glad I wasn’t chased by the police. Te only disconcerting thingwas that I ound my orehead on the rst page o the index. It waslabelled ‘bald’.



Simon Weson Flklds ver

I have had three aces in my lie. Te rst was the one I was born with.Te second one was the one I had ater I got burned. Te third is theace I have now, ater numerous operations.

And yet I look at this sel-portrait, and it doesn’t look likeanybody I know – it certa inly doesn’t look like me. It makes me thinkthat there must have been hundreds o miscarr iages o justice in the

past. But I guess it’s the closest we could get. I got the bone structureright: I have a round at ace. I you wrap a plastic bag around a pairo ootball boots, you could still tell that it is a pair o ootball bootsin there. It’s the same with your ace.

Te eyes elt right because one is slightly more closed thanthe other. My real eyelids look dierent, o course – they have beentransplanted rom my neck. Te lip is ull at the bottom like mine –it’s like that because they had to pull skin rom the inside o my mouth.Te hair is the hair o a man in his twenties – I, however, am saltand pepper all the way. And the moustache is there. It always will be,because i I shaved it o, I would be let with just a white patch o skinunderneath. Te moustache saved that bit o my ace, it took the initial

ash o the explosion.I reckon I was a pretty good-looking ellow beore I got my burns.

Ten again, I reckon I’m a pretty good-looking ellow now. I really couldn’t give two hoots about what other people think about me. Teonly person who has to live with me is me. Tat might sound arrogant,but I don’t care.



Robin Taylor aka Rahel William Mu promotr

rying to recognise bits o your ace was a bit weird. Tere weremoments were I thought I would just crack up, where I would haveto just stop and look away. It was quite a challenge. Te lips and thechin were the most important part. I have a dip in my chin, andI recognised that instantly. Te only part rom the male kit I usedwas the nose, but that didn’t really occur to me at the t ime, I just

used whichever pieces I elt happiest with. I guess I just ound thepieces in the emale kit more right.

I have been dressing up al l my lie, but only about three yearsago did I become condent enough to actually go out as well. Allmy riends were totally ne when I came out. Most o them hadhad their suspicions anyway.

I am happy being either Rachel or Robin depending on whatmood I am in. I have never been into the girly thing – I don’tspeak with a shrill voice or do the overly camp body language. Butsometimes, when I am exciting about going out on a Friday night,I like to ounce around. Rachel is denitely a bit o a Friday night

girl. Robin is just Robin. I’ve not had any operations, and I have nointention to. With transsexuals, it’s a case o you eeling that you areborn in the wrong body – with transvestites it is easier. We just liketo wear women’s clothes.

I taught mysel how to apply make-up. Someone told me that youshould either accentuate your eyes or your mouth – I just go or it onboth ronts. Occasionally, I will get stares, but I’ve never had anyonebeing rude to me in public. I’ve had people wolwhistle at me rom theircars in an ironic way, and I’d be like, ‘Whatever, cheers!’

I guess Rachel has changed over the years. You’ve got to dress yourage – even in drag. Sometimes you see people in their sixties in shortskirts and you think: remember not to do that in thirty years time.

Stick to what looks good.



Dunan XTtooit

I am not that good on aces. I oten don’t recognise people whenthey come into my shop – I wil l only remember their names whenI see their tattoo.

Te rst tattoos on my own ace were the two tear dropsunderneath my eye. It’s an ironic reerence to gangster culture – it’ssupposedly what you get done when you kil l someone in prison. Or

maybe I’m just very sad. Haha! I used to have a little beard under my lip, but then that suddenly became trendy, so I thought I’d go evenmore extreme and got this tattoo done. It’s in the shape o an H.I used to have a bit o a problem with heroin, so it’s a l ittle reminder.I also have a tattoo on my eyelids: it says ‘Don’t Wake’. Te X betweenmy eyes? Tat’s a bit hateul, really – it’s actually carved in, so it’s ascar rather than a tattoo. A lot o tattoos are like the acceptable aceo sel-harming.

When I am out on the street, having a tattoo across my aceseems to work in my avour. It tends to disarm people. I know it canlook quite threatening, and that was probably my intention to begin

with, but i anything I tend to get nice comments these days. I havea kid now, and I recently went to a parents evening – they were ne,they know I am not aggressive.

I would tattoo the ace o somebody who is in my proession,but I’d eel unny about doing it to somebody else. It has got to beacceptable. Once a girl came into my shop: she was a real ly angry person, and she wanted ‘Fuck O’ tattooed across her neck. I wouldn’tdo it. I said to her, ‘You’re not always going to eel like that, my love’.She told me to uck o. A colleague d id it or her eventually. Now,a couple o years down the line, she’s back in the shop to have theletters covered up.



Rajnaara C. Akhar Lwyr

I have never been really concerned about my looks. I grew up inLoughborough, in a largely non-Muslim school. Te other girlsat my school would spend several hours getting their hair rightevery morning – I never cared too much about that. I do think it’simportant to make an eort to not look scruy when you go out,but I also think that there is a dierence between looking presentable

and looking attractive.My parents encouraged me to wear the hijab when I was 14,

but I was rebellious then. It was something that would have made mestand out, so I didn’t want to wear it. Not until I was 18 and went touniversity did I start to understand the philosophy behind the veil.Now that I have chosen to wear it constantly, I know that it has comeout o my own choice.

I noticed a change particularly in the way boys treated me. Ater I started to wear the veil, I just ound that boys paid me thatlittle bit more respect. When they d id look at me, they would lookme in the eyes.

I don’t wear the niqab, but I disagree with t he view that wearinga ull veil is a barrier to communication. In this day and age, ace toace communication happens so inrequently – most conversations aredone over the phone or email – and we manage to express our eelingsand opinions perectly well that way. Why then, can we supposedly notcommunicate when we sit down together and look each other only inthe eye? In Britain we don’t expect people to subscribe to one way o dressing – that’s just not how we do things.

At the end o the day, a woman is a woman. You don’t have toshow on a daily basis what it is that makes you emale. I know that I ama women – that doesn’t mean I have to display everything to prove it.



Melia Bradhaw Mu jorlit

I started wearing hoodies when I was at boarding school. We usedto smoke out in the woods, but teachers would come out to bust you,so everyone used to wear their hoods when smoking. Nowadays it’sa comort thing, so it’s strange that some people perceive hoodiesas threatening. Most o the time when I put my hoodie up, I do itbecause I’m tired and I want to shut out the world a bit. Living in

London, I oten come back home late, and I will always wear my hoodup when I walk the streets at night – it makes me look streetwise andless vulnerable.

Obviously there are people who wear a hoodie because they arecommitting a crime and don’t want to be identied, but it’s a ridiculousgeneralisation to assume that everyone who wears a hoodie is acriminal. Recently I was in a pub, just having a ew drinks with my mate, and a bouncer came over and told me to take my hood o. Tepsychology o that is interesting – you could wr ite a PhD on it. Society is a lot more intrusive nowadays than it used to be: i you hide away alittle bit rom that surveillance, it is immediately considered aggressive.

I was very, very sel-conscious about my looks rom when I wasabout ten until I was about 18. You know at school everybody takesthe piss out o you because o your red hair? I was at boarding school,and I had to walk past the boys rooms in order to get to class, andI remember once someone shouted at me “All ugly gingers should beshot!”. Tat when I was 14 and ridiculously paranoid anyway. Onenight I got really drunk and cut most o it o.

As soon as I let boarding school and went to London, everythingwas turned on its head – suddenly I got loads o attention rom menbecause I was ginger. Tat was conusing. Now I am really happy withmy hair, and I like being pale, even though I still eel uncomortableabout reckles. I am a music journalist and I go out clubbing a lot – UV

lights can make reckles look very weird.

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