286 Life and Tj^tterx of Frniu-in GnKoii 



apparatuB for photographing the composite image either' from helow the 

 screen or from the eye-piece side. 



The paper of 1878 to which reference has more than once l)een made' 

 describes for the tiret time the very simple arrangement — a window with two 

 cross-hairs or wires and two pinholes in the frame — by which Galton at first 

 registered the series of photographs to be compounded. For full face one 

 hau" was taken horizontally bisecting the pupils and the other, the vertical, 

 bisecting the distance between the pupils. A prick made in each pinhole 

 then registered the photograph. It is requi.site that the whole series of photo- 

 graphs should be practically of the same size, or if not, reduced to the same 

 size. All that is needful is, if n seconds be the correct exposure and there be 

 m phot<3graph8, to give n/m seconds to each. If we suppose n = 50 and m = 8, 

 we combine eight portraits. If we wish to combine more, it is better to 

 combine composites of 8 to 10 each to obtain the full composite. Of this 

 Galton writes : 



" Those of its outlines are sharpest and darkust that are common to the largest number of 

 the oomponents ; the purely individual peculiarities leave little or no visible trace. The latter 

 being neoeMarily disposed on both sides of the average, the outline of the composite is the 

 arerage of all the components'. It is a band and not a fine line, because the outlines of the 

 oomponents are seldom exactly suixTim posed. The band will be darkest in its middle when- 

 ever the component portraits have the same general type of features, and its breadth, or 

 •mount of the blur, will measure the tendency of the components to deviate from the common 

 type. This is so, for the very same rea-son that the ^hot-marks on a target are more thickly 

 dupoaed near the bull's-eye than away from it, and in a greater degree as the marksmen are 

 more skilful. All that has been said of the outlinen is equally true as regards the shadows; 

 the result being that the composite represents an averaged figure, whose lineaments have been 

 softly drawn. The eyes come out with appropriate distinctness, owing to the mechanical con- 

 ditions under which the components were hung. 



A composite portrait represents the picture that would rise before the mind's eye of a man 

 who had the gift of pictorial imagination in an exalted degree. But the imaginative power 

 even of the highest artiste is far from precise, and is so apt to bo biased by special cases that 

 may have struck their fancies, that no two artists agree in any of their typical forms. The 

 merit of the photographic composite is its mechanical precision, being suDJect to no errors 

 beyond those incidental to all photographic productions." (p. 134.) 



Galton exhibited at the meeting composites of criminals, and notes of 

 them that the special villainous irregularities have disappeared and the 

 common humanity that underlies them has prevailed'. This I think sliould 

 have been used as an argument that the criminal is not a distinct pAysjca/ 

 type, criminality is a mentality and the physicjil and the mental are not 

 closely correlated. On the other hand, when composite photography is 

 applied to a physically differentiated race, e.g. the Jews, it does in a marked 

 manner indicate a type*. And therein, I think, its future usefulness lies. 



' "Composite Portraits," Journal of the AtUhropolo<iical IiutiliUe, Vol. vm, pp. 1.32—42, 

 1878. 



'Galton recognised later that this early composite was an "aggregation" rather than an 

 average. 



' Mr Hyde Clarke in the discussion which followed as8(?rt«<l that the criminal characteristics 

 were eliminated, and they hod a natural type of man instead, and attributed the result to the 

 pruoesa producing merely an 'average,' in8tea<l of arguing that there was not a distinct physical 

 criminal tyjx^ ' See our pp. 293-4 ami l'lat<ss XXVIII and XXIX. 



