Identical Photographs Research Articles

Woman as Battleground

This article examines how photographs of women taken by Marc Garanger during his army service in Algeria (1960–1962) have become sites of multiple, often competing mnemonic projections. At the height of the Algerian War of Independence, Garanger produced nearly two thousand identity photographs of those displaced by the French army from villages to detention camps. The photographs of women are some of the most cited images from the war, having been popularised through Garanger’s own photobooks. They are either read as strictly exploitative or, following Garanger’s narrative, as bearing witness to Algerian suffering. The article departs from attempts to fix the ‘true’ meaning of these images and examines their afterlives, while reflecting upon the hyper-visibility of women as images. It discusses newly recovered archival material, alongside Garanger’s decision to return to Algeria in 2004, revealing inconsistencies in Garanger’s carefully crafted narrative and reflecting upon the speculative futures of these contested images.

Artistic meanderings through Coolitude

Referencing two 19th-century identity photographs of Indian migrants named Beekano and Doorgana, taken from the research of historian Marina Carter at the Mauritian Archives, Flynn has produced artworks using the obsolete method of screen-printing to transform the portraits that originally were to aid an oppressive colonial regime focused on policing and immobilizing its immigrant labour. He has also involved the same two individuals in a fictionalized scene in which a surreal fantasy takes Beekano on a journey where he is stripped of his physical body and disappears to be released before any destination is arrived at.

False memories when viewing overlapping scenes.

Humans can memorize and later recognize many objects and complex scenes. In this study, we prepared large photographs and presented participants with only partial views to test the fidelity of their memories. The unpresented parts of the photographs were used as a source of distractors with similar semantic and perceptual information. Additionally, we presented overlapping views to determine whether the second presentation provided a memory advantage for later recognition tests. Experiment 1 (N = 28) showed that while people were good at recognizing presented content and identifying new foils, they showed a remarkable level of uncertainty about foils selected from the unseen parts of presented photographs (false alarm, 59%). The recognition accuracy was higher for the parts that were shown twice, irrespective of whether the same identical photograph was viewed twice or whether two photographs with overlapping content were observed. In Experiment 2 (N = 28), the memorability of the large image was estimated by a pre-trained deep neural network. Neither the recognition accuracy for an image part nor the tendency for false alarms correlated with the memorability. Finally, in Experiment 3 (N = 21), we repeated the experiment while measuring eye movements. Fixations were biased toward the center of the original large photograph in the first presentation, and this bias was repeated during the second presentation in both identical and overlapping views. Altogether, our experiments show that people recognize parts of remembered photographs, but they find it difficult to reject foils from unseen parts, suggesting that their memory representation is not sufficiently detailed to rule them out as distractors.

Coming into Visibility in the Indian Ocean

This article discusses photographs in the Seychelles archive of Liberated Africans and in the Mauritian archive of identity documents for indentured Indians or Indian Immigrants. It considers the heterogeneity of their movement in two related contexts, when territorial boundaries and new definitions of labour and photography were drawn into assertions of state and colonial British authority. In the Seychelles, ‘passport-sized’ photographs were fixed and immobile in the Register of Liberated Africans. In Mauritius, identity photographs were attached to documents which individuals carried to prevent what we now call ‘identify theft’ and falsification. At issue is the differential mobility of the images and what they reveal about the circumstances in which ‘free’ people were trapped in and by a British colonial state bureaucracy determined to curb the ‘lawlessness’ of settlers, only to be drawn into an entangled complicity with those it sought to regulate. When European powers were consolidating territorial jurisdictions and boundaries by policing movement across the liquid domain of the Indian and Atlantic oceans, the ‘coming into visibility’ that photography afforded and demanded worked to differentially restrict the movements of racially marked people and to make movement itself the medium of State authority over local capitalists.

A Death Squad Dossier: Counterrevolutionary Policing, Photographs of Disappearing Identities and Evidentiary Aesthetics in Postwar Guatemala

This article is concerned with photographic images and identity photographs utilised for military counterinsurgent policing in Guatemala City during the civil war (1960–96), in the context of Latin America’s Cold War. The article explores the historical conditions that made militarised policing and its photographic record possible in Guatemala, focusing on a dossier produced in the early 1980s known as Diario Militar. The article pays attention to aesthetic and evidentiary regimes that rely on the indexical force of photographs under circumstances in which indexicality fails. In doing so, it elaborates on counterrevolutionary policing as a way of seeing and not being seen, producing photographic images that at once identify political subjects and attempt to disappear their identities, and how these photographic imaginaries are being re-signified in contemporary struggles for justice in postwar Guatemala.

Effectiveness of Digital and Paper-Based Identification Keys for Plants with Slovenian Pre-service Teachers

<p style="text-align:justify">Teaching about biodiversity and its conservation could be an effective way to teach the importance of different species and human dependence on ecological support systems. This study compares the effectiveness of a digital and a paper-based dichotomous identification key for teaching pre-service teachers about plant species diversity. Twenty-four Slovenian teachers in pre-service training used a digital version of the key on tablet computers and twenty-nine used a paper-based version to identify woody species in the garden near their university faculty. Both keys contained the same species, identical photographs and the same sequence of steps to identify the species. The accuracy and time taken to identify the five species were measured. The participants also completed a questionnaire about the usability of the identification key. Overall, both versions of the key were equally good for determining species names. The digital version of the key was found to be more time-effective than the paper version only when multiple identification steps were required to identify species. The results confirm that those who scored better on the identification tasks have a better general opinion about the usability of the key; especially students using digital version of the key. Implications for teachers using or creating identification keys are discussed in the conclusion.</p>

Missing Persons: Identity Photography and Workers at the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition

Identity photographs used for official employee passbooks at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition provide a way to restore visibility to some of the massive workforce of employees and officials who are otherwise missing in conventional representations of this event. As a tool for documentation, a method for the mass production of images and a vehicle for constructing individual identity, identity photography had multiple functions at the Exposition. The professional photographic studio of James and May Gibson, working on site, demonstrates the kind of business acumen that was a requirement for the successful mass production of identity photographs. Workers were the key to successful Exposition businesses, and the food workers and employees of the Wellington Catering Company, the leading food concession, were crucial to the company’s huge financial success. Removed from their original passbooks, 273 photographs of the company’s employees illustrate that for many workers this form of photography was more than just an image of identification, but also an opportunity for a statement of personal identity.

Visits from the ghost of disturbance past: Information about past disturbance influences lay judgments of ecosystems

While effective techniques are being developed to restore ecosystem function to landscapes following anthropogenic disturbance, there has been a paucity of research on lay judgments of the quality of restored ecosystems. This represents an important research gap because judgments about the health of ecosystems following restoration are likely to influence people's satisfaction with restoration outcomes and processes. Likewise, judgments about ecosystem health following restoration are likely to influence people's perceptions about the acceptability of the activities that led to the disturbance and—ultimately—the need for restoration. Documenting how restored landscapes are perceived in terms of certain qualities—such as scenic beauty and ecosystem health—will ultimately improve our understanding of how the public will interact with them. An experiment was developed to test the effect of information on past natural and anthropogenic disturbances on lay judgments about ecosystem quality. Identical photographs of forest scenes were framed as the aftermath of natural or anthropogenic disturbances. Restored forests following natural disturbances were judged significantly more positively across a broad range of ecosystem qualities than the identical scenes following an anthropogenic disturbance. Disturbances that were natural in origin were, retrospectively and prospectively, more acceptable than anthropogenic disturbances; these results were most strongly observed for individuals endorsing biospheric values. This study offers a new context for research on lay judgments about, and perceptions of, ecosystem health. Results from this research also suggest that intuitive judgments about ecosystem quality will be important metrics by which people evaluate disturbed and restored habitats.

Anticipatory scene representation in preschool children's recall and recognition memory

Behavioral and neuroscience research on boundary extension (false memory beyond the edges of a view of a scene) has provided new insights into the constructive nature of scene representation, and motivates questions about development. Early research with children (as young as 6-7years) was consistent with boundary extension, but relied on an analysis of spatial errors in drawings which are open to alternative explanations (e.g. drawing ability). Experiment 1 replicated and extended prior drawing results with 4-5-year-olds and adults. In Experiment 2, a new, forced-choice immediate recognition memory test was implemented with the same children. On each trial, a card (photograph of a simple scene) was immediately replaced by a test card (identical view and either a closer or more wide-angle view) and participants indicated which one matched the original view. Error patterns supported boundary extension; identical photographs were more frequently rejected when the closer view was the original view, than vice versa. This asymmetry was not attributable to a selection bias (guessing tasks; Experiments 3-5). In Experiment 4, working memory load was increased by presenting more expansive views of more complex scenes. Again, children exhibited boundary extension, but now adults did not, unless stimulus duration was reduced to 5s (limiting time to implement strategies; Experiment 5). We propose that like adults, children interpret photographs as views of places in the world; they extrapolate the anticipated continuation of the scene beyond the view and misattribute it to having been seen. Developmental differences in source attribution decision processes provide an explanation for the age-related differences observed.

Investigating the enforced disappearances of Algeria's ‘Dark Decade’: Omar D's and Kamel Khélif's commemorative art projects

ABSTRACTSome estimates indicate that as many as 7000 people have been reported missing in Algeria since 1992. While Islamists are responsible for some of these abductions, the majority can be attributed to the Algerian state. Human rights organisations have since called for the investigation of ‘enforced disappearances’ or the denial of individual freedoms in the form of state-sanctioned abductions, detentions, or executions. To put pressure on a government favourable to national reconciliation and the concealment of collective trauma, women continue to gather in front of the capital's administrative offices with photos of their missing so as to demand the identification of bodies and the restitution of memory. Yet, to state officials, the recurrence of this symbolic, pacifist act constitutes a threat to the Algerian republic, as it attempts to re-emerge unscathed from the ashes of a civil war without confronting its tumultuous past. Aware of the dangers inherent to such policies, Omar D (photographer) and Kamel Khélif (graphic artist) have joined the women's plight deploying similar arms. Their work re-appropriates identity photos of the missing and engages in the struggle against amnesia and the pursuit of justice. This article analyses the significance and impact of commemorative art practices that use identity photographs to liberate the word, to denounce mass disappearances and the effacement of a new democratic Algerian identity. For artists and families, identity photographs surface as a powerful political space where individual memories become collective and where citizens can hold the state accountable for its actions.

Analysis of Fraudulent Photographs Submitted to Federal Court and the United States Congress

Photographs or recently digital images are routinely taken during autopsies. The analysis and interpretation of those images assumes that they are properly taken and handled, and can be relied upon. This paper concerns a case in which manipulation of such an image may have led to an unfounded conclusion in a death investigation. In 1994, as a result of the wrongful death civil case in United States District Court Central District of California Southern Division (SA CV 93-991) brought against the Department of Defense by Dr. David Sabow and Sarah Sabow, brother and wife of the victim, United States Marine Colonel James E. Sabow, approximately 30 autopsy photographs were released. One of the autopsy photographs differed from all the other photographs by appearing to be poorly taken. This photograph of the victim’s posterior upper body appeared to have had the flash too close to the victim’s lower left side, which caused the upper back, neck and left pinna to be overexposed. Digital analysis of a high resolution scan of this photograph revealed it was likely the result of darkroom manipulation. A nearly identical photograph to the questioned photograph, submitted in a report to the United States Congress, was a different fabrication. In December 2012 the original, unmodified photograph was discovered from which both manipulated photographs were generated. The original photograph allowed for a more detailed analysis of the questioned photographs and showed that perjured submissions had occurred: the first in Federal Court and the second to the United States Congress.

Photographic portraits of migrants in South Africa: framed between identity photographs and (self-)presentation

This essay explores how migration within the African continent is framed visually by passport photos as well as artistic documentary projects based in Johannesburg, South Africa. It offers examples of what type of photographic (self-)portraits are constructed, which photographs circulate and how African migrants’ self-images as well as South African society’s perception of them are affected by certain photographic images. The method employed is a close reading of some paradigmatic photographs. In addition, I will discuss different – and often gendered – ways in which African migrant subjects may become visible. In short, this essay asks, what photographic portraits construct the hegemonic view of the African migrant subject in the public sphere? Accordingly, the tension between visibility and invisibility of African migrants’ lives emerges in the interstices of the inquiry. The paper first looks at the taking of identity photographs, since the passport photo exemplifies how the individual is made visible by the nation state. It can simultaneously serve as a poignant reminder of the ambivalent qualities of photography: on the one hand, documenting and codifying, and on the other hand, creatively representing. In this context, the essay explores the possibility of remaining invisible or “opaque,” but also the conceivably more empowering representational aspect of photography such as we see in participatory (art) projects, which may be connected to the visual politics of self-expression and reflection.

Object Ensemble Processing in Human Anterior-Medial Ventral Visual Cortex

Our visual system can extract summary statistics from large collections of similar objects without forming detailed representations of the individual objects in the ensemble. Such object ensemble representation is adaptive and allows us to overcome the capacity limitation associated with representing specific objects. Surprisingly, little is known about the neural mechanisms supporting such object ensemble representation. Here we showed human observers identical photographs of the same object ensemble, different photographs depicting the same ensemble, or different photographs depicting different ensembles. We observed fMRI adaptation in anterior-medial ventral visual cortex whenever object ensemble statistics repeated, even when local image features differed across photographs. Interestingly, such object ensemble processing is closely related to texture and scene processing in the brain. In contrast, the lateral occipital area, a region involved in object-shape processing, showed adaptation only when identical photographs were repeated. These results provide the first step toward understanding the neural underpinnings of real-world object ensemble representation.

Indonesia. Refracted visions: Popular photography and national modernity in Java. By Karen Strassler. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. Pp. xxi + 375. Plates, Notes, Bibliography, Index.

Refracted visions: Popular photography and national modernity in Java By KAREN STRASSLER Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. Pp. xxi + 375. Plates, Notes, Bibliography, Index. The riches of photography for Indonesia's social history have been well explored for the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1940s. Other studies have examined commemorative albums, picture postcards, and the documentation of individuals, ethnic groups, antiquities, cities, railways, factories, plantations and mines. In Refracted visions, Karen Strassler takes the study of society and its peoples via the camera into the era of independent Indonesia. The focus of interest is new, and so is the author's approach. Strassler is, herself, a photographer. During two years of fieldwork in Yogyakarta (1998-2000), she joins a photography club, going on day trips with members 'hunting' for the picturesque; she reads photography magazines; visits photographic studios and print and photocopying shops; she talks to Indonesian photographers; and looks at friends' albums. In every home she records what Indonesians have pinned to their walls or framed. She is in the text, recording snatches of conversations, often giving an informant's particular choice of words in Indonesian to convey the nuance and the moment. Woven around all this are reflections on the modern Indonesian nation, the relationship of individual to the state, and how visual records reflect, perpetuate or subvert official discourse. Thanks to a subvention from the Getty Foundation, the book is lavishly illustrated, so readers can see for themselves the photographs so thoughtfully analysed. Camera technology has made dramatic advances since Woodbury and Page set up the first photography studio in Batavia in 1857. Strassler argues that Suharto's authoritarian state generated a culture of documentation. She studies several genres of photographs: studio portraits; amateur snaps; identity photographs; rituals of family life; and student photographs of political demonstrations. The final chapter presents a detailed study of an army veteran who uses photographs to prove that a divine light had entered him to verify his special status as agent for the late President Sukarno, and to fulfil his mission of moving history towards the time when Sukarno would re-emerge as leader of Indonesia and, indeed, of the world. The early part of the book looks at the late colonial era amateur photographers and the subjects they chose. Strassler notes that, since Dutch times, Indonesians of Chinese descent have dominated photography. She reproduces photographs from their albums, suggesting the rich vein for study in Indonesian albums from this period. …

Facial recognition software success rates for the identification of 3D surface reconstructed facial images: implications for patient privacy and security.

Image de-identification has focused on the removal of textual protected health information (PHI). Surface reconstructions of the face have the potential to reveal a subject's identity even when textual PHI is absent. This study assessed the ability of a computer application to match research subjects' 3D facial reconstructions with conventional photographs of their face. In a prospective study, 29 subjects underwent CT scans of the head and had frontal digital photographs of their face taken. Facial reconstructions of each CT dataset were generated on a 3D workstation. In phase 1, photographs of the 29 subjects undergoing CT scans were added to a digital directory and tested for recognition using facial recognition software. In phases 2-4, additional photographs were added in groups of 50 to increase the pool of possible matches and the test for recognition was repeated. As an internal control, photographs of all subjects were tested for recognition against an identical photograph. Of 3D reconstructions, 27.5% were matched correctly to corresponding photographs (95% upper CL, 40.1%). All study subject photographs were matched correctly to identical photographs (95% lower CL, 88.6%). Of 3D reconstructions, 96.6% were recognized simply as a face by the software (95% lower CL, 83.5%). Facial recognition software has the potential to recognize features on 3D CT surface reconstructions and match these with photographs, with implications for PHI.

Re-Presenting Self: Reading Some Van Kalker Studio Photographs

The photographic implement, from the earliest days of its invention in Europe, in 1839, has been used to document events considered as real. However, notions of ‘reality’ could be ambiguous as objects or sceneries intended to be photographed are sometimes constructed to represent an imagined stereotypical reality. In South Africa, as well as in other parts of Africa, earliest documented photographs of indigenous peoples, by many Europeans, usually depicted cultures that were ancient and, in their opinion, needed to be studied. Photography however, was subsequently used by the apartheid government in South Africa to control movement of blacks through identity (passport) photographs that classified people based on race. It eroded the dignity of blacks by presenting them in public media as being inferior, poor and violent. Nonetheless, photography has equally been appropriated by the people to project their dignity in contrast to the images widely represented. These photographs of how the indigenes saw themselves were often kept in private collections, such as family albums. This essay attempts to look at how photography was employed by the Van Kalker Photo Studio in Cape Town to depict the Blacks and ‘Coloured’ peoples in South Africa as responsible and enlightened people whose image of self representation deconstructs that upheld by the apartheid state.

A arte diante do mal radical

The main subject of this essay is The Museum of Modern Art of New York's purchasing an ensemble of identity photographs took by a young servant of Pol Pot's regime (the leader of Cambodian Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979, who exterminated thousands of civilians during this period), specially enrolled in a professional training of photography for this purpose. As reported by the youth, he just felt himself as someone engaged in a bureaucratic ritual, previous to the execution of the prisoners. The author argues that the public exhibition of the photos in a cultural event, and then they being incorporated, in 1997, to the permanent collection of an important art museum have carried the institutionalization and the naturalizing of these images into art objects; he also denounces, in the light of these episodes, the failure of the premises which traditionally grounded the humanist legitimization of art and art institution.

Facial expression recognition in rhesus monkeys, Macaca mulatta

The ability to recognize and accurately interpret facial expressions is critically important for nonhuman primates that rely on these nonverbal signals for social communication. Despite this, little is known about how nonhuman primates, particularly monkeys, discriminate between facial expressions. In the present study, seven rhesus monkeys were required to discriminate four categories of conspecific facial expressions using a matching-to-sample task. In experiment 1, the matching pair showed identical photographs of facial expressions, paired with every other expression type as the nonmatch. The identity of the nonmatching stimulus monkey differed from the one in the sample. Subjects performed above chance on session 1, with no difference in performance across the four expression types. In experiment 2, the identity of all three monkeys differed in each trial, and a neutral portrait was also included as the nonmatching stimulus. Monkeys discriminated expressions across individual identity when the non-match was a neutral stimulus, but they had difficulty when the nonmatch was another expression type. We analysed the degree to which specific feature redundancy could account for these error patterns using a multidimensional scaling analysis which plotted the perceived dissimilarity between expression dyads along a two-dimensional axis. One axis appeared to represent mouth shape, stretched open versus funnelled, while the other appeared to represent a combination of lip retraction and mouth opening. These features alone, however, could not account for overall performance and suggest that monkeys do not rely solely on distinctive features to discriminate among different expressions.

Challenging the Frame in the News

The present study contributes to the external validity of the framing concept by studying the effects of frames actually utilized in newspaper articles. The study assesses the persuasive influence of such frames on the interpretation of news, and how issue involvement and attitude interfere in this process. A total of 282 participants were presented with one of three experimental versions of a newspaper article about asylum. In the first condition the asylum seekers were implicitly labeled as innocent victims, in the second as intruders. The third version is a mixed condition in which both competing frames were applied. In all three conditions an identical photograph was inserted. The findings indicate that the frame suggests how the photograph can be interpreted. However, no indications were found for a moderating role of the news readers’ issue involvement or attitude.

Art in the Face of Radical Evil

OCTOBER 125, Summer 2008, pp. 3–23. © 2008 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. First, the photos, without interpretation or commentary. Second, the facts. Every summer, the city of Arles, in the south of France, hosts an important photography festival entitled Les Rencontres photographiques d’Arles, with dozens of exhibitions scattered around town. In 1997, the event was placed under the artistic direction of Christian Caujolle, the co-founder and art director of the French photo agency Vu and a former chief pictures editor at Liberation. Among several other exhibitions, Caujolle curated one entitled S-21, composed of one hundred portraits or identity photographs (I don’t quite know what to call them) of victims of the Cambodian genocide. S-21 is the name of a former high school in the borough of Tuol Sleng, in Phnom Penh, which Pol Pot turned into a torture center and extermination camp. Between 1975 and 1979, 14,200 people were brutally executed at S-21, either on the premises or in a field nearby. There are seven survivors. For the sake of the regime’s police and bureaucracy, every man, woman, or child entering the center was photographed before being killed. To carry out this horrendous task, a fifteen-year-old member of the Khmer Rouge named Nhem Ein was sent to Shanghai to learn photography, and, a year later, was promoted to the rank of “photographer in chief” at S-21, with a staff of five under him. When the Vietnamese liberated the center in 1979, some 6,000 negatives were found. In 1994, two American photojournalists, Chris Riley and Douglas Niven, took it upon themselves to restore and print the negatives on behalf of the Photo Archive Group, a non-profit organization they founded. One hundred photos were enlarged and shown around the world, so that the Cambodian genocide—or self-genocide, as some preferred to call it—would not be forgotten. A book of the photos was published two years later, entitled The