14 DAY TRIAL // Swiss photographer Daniel Boschung has a passion for the human face. His interest for physiognomies has prompted him to create a project called “Face Cartography” which aims to map out faces in extreme detail.
To achieve his goal, Boschung used an industrial-strength robotic arm, a Canon EOS Mark II and a 180mm macro lens converted in a telecentrical lens, basically creating an automated portrait machine.
The resulted mega portraits are incredibly detailed and hyper-realistic photographs of the subjects he shot. Each photo contains about 600 single shots with a size of a whopping 900 million pixels.
At this level of detail, each structure on the subject’s face seems to bear a story of its own.
“A stubble turns into a trunk, a wrinkle into a canyon, the nostril into a cavern,” as Boschung himself admits.
But the overall effect is taunting, as in these huge photographs emotions seem to be completely absent. As you might have guessed, the process of snapping such accurate photos is not an easy one, so one could say the "humanity" is somehow lost in this portraits.
“Emotions show up only briefly while Macro photography takes half an hour. The person has to stay motionless while being photographed by the robot.”
For those curious, you can access the gallery and can zoom in and out of every detail, by taking a tour through the facial landscape of the various individuals photographed.
