Androgyny (6 Men + 6 Women)

1982, printed 1999

Androgyny (6 Men + 6 Women), 1982, printed 1999. Nancy Burson (American, b. 1948). Gelatin silver print; image: 22.9 x 20.8 cm (9 x 8 3/16 in.); framed: 48.1 x 44.5 cm (18 15/16 x 17 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Jane B. Tripp Charitable Lead Annuity Trust 2020.72 © Nancy Burson Working with two MIT engineers, Nancy Burson developed the technique of computer morphing faces in the late 1980s. Instead of photographing individuals and then morphing their images, Burson chose to use examples from books and other pre-existing sources, exploring not individuality but instead the power and danger of stereotypes. Androgyny questions how we identify a face as male or female. The component faces in the work include a variety of ages but are all Caucasian. The current global ratio of men to women in 2020 is estimated at 1.02 males for each female.