Photography

Physical Attraction

ANNMARIE MACKINNON, KATIE HUISMAN

Over a three-year period Katie Huisman made portraits of fifty couples who had been together for between two months and sixty-one years. The partners were photographed separately, under identical lighting conditions and at the same distance from the camera. Huisman kept a chart drawn on the studio floor to ensure that each subject took up the same position for each shot. She then superimposed the digital images of each couple by matching their eyes on the horizontal plane of a cephalometric (head measurement) grid. She did not alter the scale or dimensions of any of the images. The result is a merging of two individuals into a single person.

In 90 percent of couples photographed, the distance between the eyes of each person matched that of the partner to within 2 millimetres; in most cases the two partners’ profiles were almost identical.

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ANNMARIE MACKINNON, KATIE HUISMAN

AnnMarie MacKinnon is an editor, writer and instructor. She was the publisher of Geist from 2017 to 2021.


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