” In an era of face recognition software and data sharing between governments and corporations , the only way to protect your identity, and hence your privacy, may be to destroy all pictures of yourself” – Paul Wombell

Defacing portraits in contemporary photography

The human brain is not too good at remembering faces, where as a computer helped by photography can store all data and make links between different locations and time zones. With a set of numbers a face can be recognized. Facebook is taking this project further, with a face recognition software called DeepFace which is almost as accurate as the human brain when it comes to recognizing faces. In the UK a system run by the government communication head quarters can access photographs on social media sites, emails and texts for facial recognition purposes.

Reasons why you might want to hide your face?

• Modesty
• Criminality
• Protection
• To Evade security cameras
• When taking part in a public demonstration
• Privacy
• Combat surveillance

Does face recognition come with power?

If personal photographs on social media and surveillance cameras are accessible not only to your friends and family but also to the government and operations. Can power be defined by how much data can be traced through facial recognition. More recently we have seen an example of this when technology was used to recognize the thousands of refugees travelling from the Middle East to Europe.

In my personal study I have chosen to obscure my mums face with objects and make her identity unknown until the end of the project.  I chose to this because I think it links in with her job title, as a domestic I think my mum’s work is in the background and not taken much notice of. I represented this in my photographs by ‘hiding’ her face with an object. When I first started photographing I did this unconsciously, it was only when I looked back at the photographs that I realized and carried on with this idea.