What's in a face?

Apparently you can infer all sorts of things about a person just from a brief glance at their features. It's all down to the brain being very clever and networking information from the part of the brain that perceives the face and the bit that decides if there's anything threatening or useful showing in the face.

Over time - a long time - the ability to quickly extract information from faces has allowed mankind to predict something of the character and behaviour of the people we look at.  We can tell who might blow up at any moment and who might be trustworthy.


 Would you trust this cat?  

Personally I wouldn't. I think it's evil. It's smiling - but what a tight, weird smile -  and what is it looking at? What can it see? It's dreaming up some awful demonic attack. This is a cat that would blow! 

This extraordinary image, above, was made by Odires Mlaszho.  It is a collage combining a black and white image made in 1945 from a book called Roman Portraits with the cut out eyes from Paul Swiridoff's 1960s photo of a German politician. It is very arresting. Very spooky. The two images fit together almost seamlessly. This becomes a man that I doubly would not trust.
And what about this baby? It's not a real baby, but a replica of a child that died. I think it's very odd. That baby knows he's on the way out. He can see it coming. I can't imagine if any of my children had died that I'd want a waxwork of them lying around the house forever reminding me of the tragedy. But someone did. 
I've just started work on a new book. I was trying to find a good face to work with. I didn't. But I did find some interesting ones to keep me, as usual, from getting on with my writing.