First Beauty Composite: Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Sophia Lauren, Marilyn Monroe

1982, printed 1999

First Beauty Composite: Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Sophia Lauren, Marilyn Monroe, 1982, printed 1999. Nancy Burson (American, b. 1948). Gelatin silver print; image: 20.9 x 22.7 cm (8 1/4 x 8 15/16 in.); framed: 46.4 x 46.3 cm (18 1/4 x 18 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Jane B. Tripp Charitable Lead Annuity Trust 2020.75 © Nancy Burson By compositing the faces of female movie stars from two different eras, Nancy Burson helps us see how the type of face considered photogenic and therefore beautiful changed over the space of just a couple of decades. Curiously, creating digital composites of women took Nancy Burson longer than producing composites of men because women’s hairstyles are much more varied. Standards of beauty vary not only across cultures but also through time.