Fingerprints

Fingerprints is a project in which projected light patterns are used as the basis of a portrait. The patterns are created using an image of the participant’s own fingerprint.

Every fingerprint is unique, as is everybody’s appearance. By combining the two elements together, a truly individual portrait is created, with the whorls, loops, and arches following the topography of the face.

The fingerprints themselves are made by taking an impression of the finger’s friction ridges, in black ink onto a glass slide, creating a negative. Light is then projected through this glass slide. No digital manipulation is used.

Every participant is photographed from five angles, with the edge of the fingerprint image positioned to fall onto the clavicle. The resulting images – inspired by the figureheads on coins, or on bas-relief cameos – seem to float in the surrounding darkness.