Human “heads” in different positions (head on and sideways), and in some cases in motion (rotation from one profile to the next), appear on four monitors placed frontally at different heights in a dark space. Each video tape, lasting some 30 minutes in a loop, corresponds to a gradual procession of portraits which are individualized to start with and then merge with each other until just a single face is produced, enlivened by light pulsations on the outlines. The project produced by Karl-Hartmut Lerch & Claus Holtz, came into being in 1980 at the Paris Biennale, during which the artists collected photograms of thousands of visitors, all their eyes set on the same line. These images were transferred to video and added to with new shots, and then put together one behind the other, based on an ascending rhythm: one or two photograms per face, then one face per photogram, up to a speed capable of reaching 20,000 images a second. The result, organized around different poses, shows a generic face in which all distinguishing features are done away with, leaving just an average physiognomy. A sort of portrait of humankind appears, conjuring up the ideal figures of Leonardo da Vinci and the monstrous synthetic images of Nancy Burson. The confusion created by these images in the viewer calls to mind the debate about aura, triggered in 1935 by Walter Benjamin. Issues of identity and expression, oneness and multiplicity, singularity and ordinariness are all raised here from a technical treatment at the crossroads of photography, film and video. They anticipate the digital procedures of morphing.

Françoise Parfait
Translated by Simon Pleasance