In the first chapter of Graphesis, Drucker discusses the idea of extracting information from a physical form, such as a person’s face, and analyzing it through graphic representation. This practice, referred to as physiognomy, essentially reads and predicts human personality traits based off of a person's facial features.
Giambattista Della Porta - De Humana physiognomonia
- In 1585, Italian physiognomist, Giambattista della Porta, studied the connections between human and animal facial characteristics to ultimately make value judgements about people’s character and personality.
- For example, if a human had a broad nose that resembled one of a chimpanzee, della Porta assumed that this person was intelligent, simply because chimpanzee’s were an intelligent species.
- As a result, many of the facial features were over exaggerated in their graphic representations in order to exemplify and prove a specific characteristic.
- Despite the fact that della Porta’s deduction is deeply flawed and highly based on interpretation, his work can be seen as the very first form of caricature art.
Alphonse Bertillon -
- French forensic investigator, Alphonse Bertillon, built on the ideas of della Porta and used physiognology within the prison system to analyze the personalities and characteristics of criminals.
- By gathering and analyzing hundreds of photos of criminals faces, Bertillon created a “system of criminal identification”.
- These photos can be seen as early forms of mug shots and were later made obsolete by the introduction of fingerprints to track and identify prisoners.
- Through closely measuring the faces of criminals, Bertillon used this information to identify specific people who had committed crimes in the past and who he believed were repeat offenders.
- This process soon became extremely problematic and racist as demonstrated by Cesare Lombroso who believed that he could identify criminals in a crowd of people solely based on their facial features.
Citations:
https://www.wired.com/2015/01/fantastically-wrong-physiognomy/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/13831286_Face_facts_a_history_of_physiognomy_from_ancient_Mesopotamia_to_the_end_of_the_19th_century
http://www.nleomf.org/museum/news/newsletters/online-insider/november-2011/bertillon-system-criminal-identification.html