Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne (de Boulogne)
1856
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Figure 51: À droite, contraction partielle de l'élévateur commun de l'aile du nez et de la lèvre supérieure: mécontentement, mauvaise humeur; à gauche, repos is a 1856 by Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne (de Boulogne), a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a black-and-white photo of a man’s face split down the middle. One side looks grumpy, the other side is calm. Duchenne used electricity to make only certain muscles twitch. He wanted to show which muscles create each emotion. The photo feels more like a science experiment than a portrait. If you like how art and science mix, look up The Cleveland Museum of Art for more works like this.
This photograph is part of the first systematic exploration of the physiology of human facial expression. In order to demonstrate how each individual muscle contributed to creating an expression, Duchenne stimulated one or more muscles on one side of the face and left the other at rest.
Duchenne, a neurologist at a hospital for the poor in Paris, turned to photography to record the grammar of human expression.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne (1806–1875) was a De boulogne artist.
See the richer artist page
