chromosomic-text

The Chromosomic Memory

   There is a belief, many times disproven, that we can see the true nature of a person through their face. Yet this belief lingers in our collective unconsciousness. The science of Phrenology to identify criminals, the psychological theories of Zsondi to classify mental disorders are such examples. While Freud focused on the individual unconscious, and Jung on the collective unconscious, Szondi privileged what he called “the family unconscious.” The fields of artificial intelligence and facial recognition are moving so quickly that any notion of ethics is lagging decades behind, or left to works of science fiction. This is my domain. It is what I call the What if’s. What if the workings of time and the elements on a portrait produced a truer likeness much like in the portrait of Dorian Gray. Here is my first series of the Chromosomic Memory where I explore this through photographing the weathered oval porcelain portraits on gravestones.