Met Faces

Different faces converge on a face that belongs to no one. Individual differences disappear while their common structure comes forward.

Unlike the oceans, these images begin inside the same narrow category. There is no problem recognizing what any of them are. The crossing instead tests what can be discarded before a particular face stops being particular. Features migrate, proportions settle, distinctions soften. The intermediate remains completely legible as a face even as its claim to any individual weakens.

This is the phantom mean in its most literal form: not an average person, but a person produced by averaging away the evidence of particular people. The model does not lose the face as it loses the faces. It becomes more certain of the category as there is less left to say whose face it is.