a methodological study of emotion through 49 b/w portraits of the artist displaying mixed emotions, the artist asked photographer Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky to take pictures of 7 pure emotions (neutral, anger, joy, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise), the artist then began manipulating and combining the original photographs in order to create so-called mixed emotions (42 portraits in total), each portrait is given a two-number code, each digit corresponding with the pure emotions listed, numbered and described in the back of this work; here, each pure emotion is described with a careful cataloguing of the physical expressions of the face (e.g. frowning, widening of the eyes, lips pressed firmly together, etc.), these physical descriptions are the ‘ingredients’ of each photograph; the first digit of the code given to each portrait describes the position or movement of the eyes, the second digit describes the mouth, the result is a photographic index of all possible combinations of emotions.
one might expect that such a rational, mathematical approach to something as irrational as emotions might lead to some unrealistic outcomes but the opposite is true: the manipulated portraits illustrating combined emotions feel very natural and even without checking the overview in the back, one can usually tell which two emotions are displayed, text in Dutch, stapled, 26 x 21 cm, 96 not numbered pages, (Amsterdam) 2010
