PORTRAITS SOUFFLÉS

AFTER ALPHONSE BERTILLON

2015

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Installation

About 300 x 530 cm

The title Portraits soufflés is a reference to the Spoken Portraits by Alphonse Bertillon in the late 19th century. Bertillon, the inventor of forensic anthropometry, formulated synoptic tables describing facial morphological characteristics (nose, ears, eyes, and so on), making it possible to identify and keep records of individuals.

My plates are inspired by Bertillon’s, with the difference that the fragments used have been stolen from Facebook (the french word "souffler" means to whisper, but also to take away). This social network, which has more than one billion users tin the world, encourages us to give ourselves up to it, body and soul, quietly forgetting that all our iconographic and textual data may be used by others, and that every day we collaborate unwittingly in creating a record of our own identities.

This installation has been specially created for the Month of Photography in Montreal as part of the monographic exhibition, « Tous décavés » which was questioning the registration of citizens through the use of web and new technologies.