Bruegel the Elder - Seven Vices and a Virtue and Proverbs

Francis Galton's Composite Portraits

Francis Galton (1822-1911), the first to coin the term "eugenics," developed a photographic overlay technique called composite photography. Galton mistakenly thought that he could construct bio-types and discover biological similarities between different members of similar social classes, races, families, and professions. While he thought he was working towards the social good, believing that his findings would aid in medical diagnoses and law enforcement practice, his pseudoscience photography was taken incredibly seriously by many people. It isnt hard to see how problematic it is to construct an "ideal" criminal bio-type and then go around arresting people with "criminal" facial features before they have the opportunity to commit crimes. Galton's foray into composite photography was an important step towards totalizing social control. Composite photography and Phrenology in the same period both were used to attempt to discern group identification and deeper psycho-pathological structures based on surface visibilities. Included below is a 6 page article of Galton explaining in his own words what he thought he was doing, as well as an excursus on his methodology. Below that are several of his composites, including the criminal type, the Jewish type, and American scientists, amongst others.

José Mojica Marins- Finis Hominis aka The End of Man (1971)

The Prisoner- The Complete Series

Those who know me know of my long and abiding obsession with the 17 episode 1960s british Sci-Fi/Spy television show the Prisoner. In my opinion the Prisoner was probably the first television show (and one of the only ones to this day) that can be considered as a work of art. On a purely literary, or textual level, the entire show functions as a massive critique of the spy-serial genre, taking all the recycled and expected plot elements from Danger Man (known in the U.S. as Secret Agent Man), and turning them on their head, exposing them as hollow and politically compromised residual elements of a nationalist surveillance state percolating all around the space of the screen but never within it. This is precisely why Patrick McGoohan decided to make the Prisoner after his work on Danger Man. His deep thinking about the social and political role he played in Danger Man made him the perfect, and only person qualified to launch such a critique. The Prisoner is much more than a genre critique however, and its unfair to only think of it in those terms. It is a stunning show with impeccable acting and writing. The basic plot follows a former secret agent (McGoohan) who is held prisoner in a mysterious seaside village where his captors try to find out why he abruptly resigned from his job. Each episode Mcgoohan attempts an escape from his captors, unraveling slowly the precarity of his situation each time his attempt is thwarted, slowly learning more and more about the prison he is held in and its striking similarity to the social and political situation of the home land. The show is incredibly complex, and the last episode is so incredibly confusing and shot through with symbolism that it caused an uproar when it was finally shown. Audiences did not at the time have any clue what to make of the seemingly absurdist spectacle, they wanted answers, real closure like in a real spy serial. Mcgoohan had no intention of giving it to them. The last episode, entitled FALLOUT raises many more questions than it answers, the way it should be. I cannot recommend this series enough.

The Student of Prague (1926)

Utagawa Kuniyoshi-Ukio-e Woodblock Prints

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Stretching Things by Steve Ditko