Split Photos of Gerald Grow

Split Portraits of Gerald Grow

After writing about left/right splits in portraits, I could not resist producing some pictures of myself that combine left and right sides from different photos where I was hamming it up to produce different expressions.

Try blocking off the left and right sides of each picture below, to bring out the halves.

No one of these pictures represents an expression that is possible in life, but portraits can show contradictory expressions.

My version of the Viennese expression: Cheerful but worried. The other half of that worried face, plus angry.

An easy cheerfulness dominates this face, but if you block off the cheerful right side (on your left), you will see a fallen face. Rembrandt probably would have put a drooping smudge of a shadow at the corner of the mouth. The cheerfulness here is clearly qualified by a contradictory expression, but can you see what it is? If you block off the cheerful right side (on your left), you will see a different face. Remember the Hals portrait?

If any other compulsive teachers are listening, I can't help thinking that art museums could set up hands-on interactive exhibits at which viewers could combine different facial expressions, as a way of sensitizing them to looking at portraits.

After writing about left/right splits in portraits, I could not resist producing some pictures of myself that combine left and right sides from different photos where I was hamming it up to produce different expressions. Try blocking off the left and right sides of each picture below, to bring out the halves. No one of these pictures represents an expression that is possible in life, but portraits can show contradictory expressions.

My version of the Viennese expression: Cheerful but worried.	The other half of that worried face, plus angry.

An easy cheerfulness dominates this face, but if you block off the cheerful right side (on your left), you will see a fallen face. Rembrandt probably would have put a drooping smudge of a shadow at the corner of the mouth.	The cheerfulness here is clearly qualified by a contradictory expression, but can you see what it is? If you block off the cheerful right side (on your left), you will see a different face. Remember the Hals portrait?
If any other compulsive teachers are listening, I can't help thinking that art museums could set up hands-on interactive exhibits at which viewers could combine different facial expressions, as a way of sensitizing them to looking at portraits.