Who’s Who? (July/August 1995 | Volume: 46, Issue: 4)

Who’s Who?

AH article image

Authors: James G. Barber

Historic Era: Era 10: Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

Historic Theme:

Subject:

July/August 1995 | Volume 46, Issue 4

More than any other features, our faces are what mark us as unique individuals. Superficially our faces are who we are. Together with names they identify us with the lives we have lived; they are our perpetual calling cards. Our interest in and curiosity about faces is a natural phenomenon, and if we are to feel a kinship with our national heritage, it matters that we recognize the faces of our American icons.

 

A story published in the February 1994 issue of American Heritage about a daguerreotype believed by some people to be the earliest extant likeness of Abraham Lincoln is interesting not so much for what it tells us about Lincoln as for the questions it raises about the uses of technology in the study of historic faces. In matters of an objective nature, like magnification, technology can be a great and necessary asset. But, in the realm of the subjective, the powers of human discernment are primary, and computer imaging and other technologies can sometimes lead us astray. The Washington Post art critic Paul Richard has made a long career of looking at works that are by their very nature subjective. In a recent article about the efforts of the National Gallery of Art to re-examine its collection for suspicious Rembrandt paintings, Richard wrote: “While counting threads in canvases, or layerings of pigment, or the growth rings in wood panels, may lend the whole endeavor a scientific sheen, gauging authenticity remains inherently subjective. When all is said and done, scholars trust their instincts, and the judgments of their eyes.”

Individuals do not routinely change beyond recognition between the ages of 30 and 50, particularly if they have not gained or lost weight, gone bald, or grown facial hair.
 

And so it should be with the task of identifying human faces, especially a historic one like Abraham Lincoln’s, which has been etched in our national consciousness for more than a century. What can be said about the image of the man alleged by some to be the young Lincoln? First and foremost, it does not look like the Lincoln we are used to seeing in scores of photographs, paintings, prints, and sculptures. Warning lights should be flashing all over, because our discriminating sense of vision is telling us something important.

With a face as ubiquitous and distinctive as Lincoln’s, failure to recognize him should be a primary concern. Still, if we choose not to rely solely upon our sense of vision—if we accept the possibility that the man alleged to be Lincoln is indeed Lincoln—we must ask ourselves what so changed Lincoln’s adult face that it would require computer enhancement to be recognized? Individuals, men especially, do not routinely change beyond recognition between the ages of thirty and fifty (roughly the years of physical maturity), particularly if they have not gained or lost weight, gone bald or grown facial hair,