Mankind (An Oriental, a Caucasian, and a Black weighted according to current population statistics)

1983–85, printed 1999

Mankind (An Oriental, a Caucasian, and a Black weighted according to current population statistics), 1983–85, printed 1999. Nancy Burson (American, b. 1948). Gelatin silver print; image: 22.8 x 19.4 cm (9 x 7 5/8 in.); framed: 48.4 x 44.5 cm (19 1/16 x 17 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Jane B. Tripp Charitable Lead Annuity Trust 2020.76 © Nancy Burson Although the image, if done with 2020 population statistics, might not look terribly different, the concept of race has changed in the intervening decades. Racial identity is often now discussed as a social rather than biological construct and is no longer considered a valid division by most geneticists. Burson used pictures from a 19th-century book of racial stereotypes and weighted their visibility in the resulting composite to reflect world population statistics in the mid-1980s.