Unmistakably Human

The photographs proposed do not depict any actual human anatomy. They are physical sculptures made from dead leaves, photographed and focus stacked. Reminiscent of the paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Max Ernst they differ insofar that the simulacra are more accidental rather than premeditated. Pareidolia. The tendency of humans to assign meaning onto something where there is none. Photographic portraiture implies the representation of a real person whereas these photographs do not. Rather, they are the synthesis of the commonness of people. If art is conversation, can't the subject of a photograph— as with painting—be just a vehicle, a metaphor ? Is portrait photography in its concrete form, and by tradition, self-limited by its medium and constrained to show some human physicality? Or can it be figurative, representing uniquely human characteristics by other means? These images exist and do meet the definition of portraiture, if not by convention, because of a shared selective retention that drives cultural evolution. They are both implicit and explicit. They are memetic and can only be explained because of a primeval understanding of what makes us uniquely human.