Face to Face: Analysis and Comparison of Facial Features to Authenticate Identities of People in Photographs

By Joelle Steele

"Face to Face" was written for anyone who relies on the accurate identification of people in photographs. This unique book is based on the author's 30+ years of knowledge and experience in the analysis of facial features in photographic format. It includes the basics of anthropometry and biometrics as adapted for use in the two-dimensional world of photography, and covers the anatomy, analysis, measurement, and comparison of the face and ears, as well as idosyncratic traits and other identifying factors. It contains several sample face analyses, and also addresses post-mortem photographs, face modifications, surveillance photos, police sketches, faces as portrayed in art, handwriting on photos, and more. Includes extensive glossary and bibliography. This is the ebook version of the 2013 print edition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joelle Steele
• Release date: Aug 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781940388205

Joelle Steele

Joelle Steele writes mystery and ghost novels and non-fiction books about face & ear ID, handwriting forgery, art, astrology, cat care, genealogy, and horticulture. And, she is a legal writer of contract templates for small business. She has extensive published credits and has worked as a writer, editor, and publisher since 1973.

Book preview

Face to Face:

Analysis and Comparison of Facial Features

to Authenticate Identities of People in Photographs

Written and Illustrated By Joelle Steele

Copyright Joelle Steele 2014

Published by Many Hats Publications/Joelle Steele Enterprises Publishing at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Quotes

Acknowledgments

Preface

Chapter 1 - Anthropometry and Biometrics

Chapter 2 - Introduction to Face Analysis

Chapter 3 - Analyzing A Photograph

Chapter 4 - Anatomy and Anthropometry

Chapter 5 - Face Analysis and Measurement

Chapter 6 - Ear Analysis

Chapter 7 - Analyses - Family Photographs

Chapter 8 - Analyses - Surveillance Photographs

Chapter 9 - Analyses - Abraham Lincoln

Chapter 10 - Analysis - Anastasia Romanov

Chapter 11 - Analyses - Billy the Kid

Chapter 12 - Analyses - Emily Dickinson

Chapter 13 - Analyses - Sam Bass

Chapter 14 - Analyses - Paul McCartney

Chapter 15 - Face Modifications

Chapter 16 - Post-Mortem Photographs

Chapter 17 - Faces in Photographs and Art

Chapter 18 - Handwriting on Photographs

Glossary

Bibliography

Other Books & eBooks by Joelle Steele

About the Author

Clinton & Jolie Photos

Quotes

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many millions of faces, there should be none alike.

- Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1634 AD)

The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen.

- Milan Kundera, Immortality (1990)

The art of looking at pictures can only be properly acquired by constantly looking at pictures ...

- S.D. Jouhar, fine art photographer (1946)

Measurements, to be strictly comparable, must be taken in a strictly defined way and from or between the same anatomical points.

- Aleš Hrdlička, Anthropometry (1920)

Acknowledgments

Most of my knowledge about the subject matter in this book comes from reading, taking classes, and more than 30 years of hands-on experience. But when it comes to writing my books, I always have help from a second and sometimes third set of eyes. With this book, that help came from my two editor friends, the late Lille Gardner, who helped me with the first edition when I was writing it back in 1990; and Gretchen Wilding, who helped with the original manuscript too and also with this much expanded version. I also extend my gratitude to all the people who provided me with feedback, photographs, and information, including Liz Hart-Graham, who acted as my fact-checker and research assistant.

Preface

I became interested in identifying people in photographs at the same time that I got interested in genealogy. It was 1975, and my parents were starting to explore their family heritages. They had lots of family photographs that they couldn’t identify, and a friend of mine had inherited some old photographs and albums and was in the same boat. But my friend was married to a police officer who told us about the use of ears as unique features that could be used in identifying people. I found the ears so fascinating that they led to my interest in the anatomical foundations of the face and head, and I ended up studying anthropometry and biometry, and taking classes in cranial and facial anatomy.

Unfortunately, knowing about ears and anatomy wasn’t enough. Despite my early interest in photography, I had to learn more about the differences and limitations among the various types of cameras, lenses, enlargers, negatives, processing methods, etc., past and present, and their impact on the finished product, the photograph itself. Even then, I made plenty of mistakes in my first year of identifying faces in photographs.

Back in the 1970s, I didn’t yet have the now-modern luxury of a computer with a big monitor on which to view greatly enlarged photographs and compare them face to face. Instead, I photocopied photographs and enlarged them until the eyes were the same size, and then measured the faces and compared them side-by-side. I immediately discovered that there were some pretty significant shortcomings with that highly questionable methodology. I had to find a better way. I ultimately developed my own system of measuring faces in photographs at different reliable points, essentially modifying the anatomical landmarks used in anthropometry for use in the two-dimensional world of photography. I then converted those measurements into percentages of the face, and compared the proportions. That system worked perfectly for photographs, and I developed it further to ensure the greatest accuracy.

By 1980, I had developed not only my system of analysis and comparison, but had also studied several hundred photographs in the process. I had a proficiency such that I could sell it as a service, and it was easy to find clients. My first client had 203 photographs to be compared to those of known Nazi war criminals. Since then, I have worked with private investigators, genealogists, historians, appraisers, auction houses, libraries, and museums, as well as an occasional collector. Most of the time, I am only asked to identify people in a photograph or two, but some analyses involve hundreds of photographs in a single family album or in an archival collection of antique photographs. To date, I have analyzed more than 25,000 photographs.

I wrote the first edition of this book in 1990 and published it in 1992. It was a 36-page booklet called Anthropometry and the Human Face in Photographs and it contained only eight illustrations. I wrote it in order to share my methods of identifying people in photographs at a time when most software programs were still in their infancy and I was still working more with a magnifying glass, rulers, and enlarged photocopies than I was with digital photographs in Photoshop.

Even today, face recognition software identifies faces with limited accuracy because they use only a handful of facial measurements and traits. To make an exact identification, you need considerably more. My own list has more than 100 items to examine – more than 20 in the ears alone. And, the human eye is sufficiently sharp to catch the many subtleties that a computer program misses or misidentifies, often due to varying camera angles, as long as you know what to look for. And that’s what this book is all about.

In addition to a lot of information that wasn’t in the first edition of this book, such as handwriting analysis of signatures on photographs, the 2013 print version (now in this ebook format) has a glossary, a bibliography, 270 illustrations, and several brief examples of analyses and comparisons. I hope that you will find this ebook helpful as you learn to do face-to-face analyses and comparisons of people in photographs and authenticate their identities.

Joelle Steele

August 21, 2014

1: Anthropometry and Biometrics

Anthropometry forms the basis for the methods I use to analyze and compare faces in photographs. It’s an ancient system for measuring the human body. The word anthropometry is from the Greek anthropos meaning human body, and metron meaning measure or measurement. Anthropometry is the study of human body measurements on a comparative basis. Facial features can be measured using anthropometric craniofacial surface landmarks (topographic reference points), some of which are directly related to the underlying skeletal landmarks, and I have adapted those landmarks and points for use in making face-to-face comparisons of people in photographs.

Anthropometry also forms the basis for biometrics. The term biometrics is also from the Greek, with bio meaning life, and metric meaning to measure. The definitions of anthropometry and biometrics sound very similar because they were more alike at one time when biometry (biometrics) relied on the anthropometric measurements and then applied statistical analysis to that biological data. But, the term biometrics as we use it today refers primarily to the computerized technologies that analyze biological data in databases for the purpose of authenticating identities. In that way, my methods are based also on biometrics.

Ancient Origins

Measuring the human body, including the face, is nothing new. In fact, it’s an artistic and scientific pursuit that has been around since the dawn of humankind. Two of the earliest references to works on human proportions were Silpi Sastri, written in Sanskrit, and the 5th century BC writings about human proportions by Greek sculptor Polykleitos. Both were related to art and the drawing or sculpting of the human body. There are even earlier instances of the use of hand geometry and palm prints in the prehistoric era.

Fingerprints and facial features were used for identification in ancient Babylon and China; foot/sole prints for identification from 980 AD; ear patterns for identification since the 14th century; and vein/vascular patterns for identification since the 15th century. A 14th century Portuguese historian and explorer, João de Barros, described in Décadas da Ásia, how Chinese merchants stamped children’s palm prints and footprints on paper to tell them apart, and how they signed their agreements with fingerprints.

Above (l-r): João de Barros, Leon Battista Alberti, and Leonardo da Vinci.

The Renaissance

During the 15th century, Leon Battista Alberti wrote Della pittura e della statua (On Painting and Sculpture), which outlined individual human measurements based on mathematical and anthropometric studies. Leonardo di ser Pierro da Vinci wrote of his own anthropometric findings during the same time in his Trattato della pittura (A Treatise on Painting). Albrecht Dürer, another artist and also an early pioneer of anthropometry, wrote the first illustrated work on human proportions, Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion (Four Books on Human Proportion) early in the 16th century.

It’s clear that the manner in which anthropometry was first used had more to do with capturing the human form in art and little bearing on the scientific community, save for the ancient 14th century Chinese system of identifying people with fingerprints, palm prints, and footprints.

The term anthropometry, as we know it today, was a measurement system invented by German naturalist Johan Sigismund Elsholtz (1623-1688) in 1654 while he was a student at the University of Padua, Italy and published Anthropometria (Anthropometry), which sought to measure the proportions of the human body and find a relationship to the incidence of disease. Elsholtz’ use of anthropometry is considered by many to be the first attempt to measure the human body for medical or scientific purposes, and that is exactly how he envisioned it being used, as well as in the arts.

By the late 18th century, anthropometry was becoming widely accepted and well-documented by a variety of anthropologists, scientists, physicians, and naturalists who conducted studies of the measurements of human beings. Important works were written on the subject during that time. The French anatomist, Jean-Joseph Sue presented his work Sur les proportions du squelette de l’homme (On the Proportions of the Human Skeleton) in 1750 (or 1755). Later that century, Swiss physiognomist Johan Kaspar Lavater and German naturalist Johan Friedrich Blumenbach turned their attentions to using anthropometry to compare skulls.

Above (l-r): Albrecht Dürer, Johan Elsholtz, and Jean-Joseph Sue.

The man who later introduced quantitative investigation and further developed the field of anthropometry was Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quételet, a 19th century Belgian scientist. In 1835, he published Sur l’homme et le développement de ses facultés, ou essai d’une physique sociale. (On man and the development of his abilities, or essay on a social nature). It was received and celebrated as a triumph of mathematics. In 1870, he published Anthropométrie (Anthropometry). He is probably best remembered for what is called Quételet’s Rule of Biological Variation. It states: Every natural thing shows unlimited and infinite variations of form. Nature never exactly duplicates one of her works. We may, for instance, search in vain for two identical leaves. If we found two that seemed alike to the eye, a microscopic examination would immediately show a formidable unlikeness.

From this point on until the first decades of the 20th century, anthropometry was accepted and was in common and widespread use in several scientific fields, including forensics, criminal anthropology, identification based on physical measurements, studies of human growth, constitutional medicine, disease models, and suitability for military service.

The 19th Century

The term anthropometry and the terms biometry and biometrics, all fell into common use after 1900. They had been used from the early 19th century to define any system that combined measurement and biology, including the growth of plants as well as humans. The man most often designated as the father of biometry was Francis Galton (1822-1911), an anthropologist and statistician, among other things. He was a pioneer in the systematization of fingerprints as a means of identifying people. In 1892, he wrote the book Finger Prints, and wrote many other books and papers as well.

Above (l-r): Lambert Quételet, Francis Galton, Alphonse Bertillon.

Fingerprinting had been in use for almost 50 years in India when Galton was writing about it. It was introduced there for use in law enforcement by William James Herschel (son of astronomer John Herschel) because fingerprints were unique to each person and remained stable in their form over time. The local inspector-general of the police department in Bengal, Edward Henry, following correspondence with Galton, and with the assistance of others in his department, developed the system of fingerprinting that became known as the Henry Classification System. Henry’s system eventually formed the basis for fingerprinting throughout the world which, until only recently and while still in use, has