Silhouette Photography

The advantage of the profile portrait is that, because it depends strongly upon the proportions and relationship of the bony structures of the face, forehead, nose and chin, the image is clear and simple, and deviates less from the appearance of the sitter with changes caused by age, weight and illness. Profile portraits have been employed on coinage since the Roman era. The early Renaissance period saw a fashion for painted profile portraits and many famous people such as Lorenzo de Medici were depicted in profile. Recent research at Stanford University indicates that where previous studies of face recognition have been based on frontal views, studies with silhouettes show humans are able to extract accurate information about gender and age from the silhouette alone. This is an important concept for artists who design characters for visual media, because the silhouette is the most immediately recognisable and identifiable shape of the character.
A silhouette portrait can be painted or drawn. However, the traditional method of creating silhouette portraits is to cut them from lightweight black cardboard, and mount them on a pale (usually white) background. This was the work of specialist artists, often working out of booths at fairs or markets. A traditional silhouette portrait artist would cut the likeness of a person, freehand, within a few minutes. Some modern silhouette artists also make silhouettes portraits from photographs of people taken in profile. The work of the physiognomist Johanna Caspar Lavater, who used silhouettes to analyse facial types, is thought to have promoted the art. One of the most famous silhouette artists of the 18th century, August Edouart, cut thousands of portraits in duplicate. His subjects included French and British nobility and US presidents. Much of his personal collection was lost in a shipwreck. In England, the best known silhouette artist was John Miers, who travelled and worked in different cities, but had a studio on the Strand in London.