Nancy Burson

(American, b. 1948)

Evolution II, 1984

Nancy Burson produced some of the earliest computer-generated portraits, and in collaboration with MIT engineers Richard Carling and David Kramlich, became a pioneer in the now familiar territory of computer-manipulated imagery. Burson continued to collaborate with Kramlich, who later became her husband. Together the two developed a significant computer program which gives the user the ability to age the human face and subsequently has assisted the FBI in locating missing persons. In Evolution II she combined the face of a man with that of a monkey to produce an imaginary portrait of a species (as well as a technology) in transition. This image was published in a series of manipulated portraits, reproduced in the book Composites (1986).

Nancy Burson was born in St. Louis in 1948 and attended Colorado Women’s College in Denver. Her photographs and video work have been exhibited widely, and are in the collections of the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many other private and international public collections. Nancy Burson lives and works in New York.

Batchen, Geoffrey. Metamorphoses: Photography in the Electronic Age. New York: Aperture Foundation, 1994.

Burson, Nancy. “The Age Machine” and Composite Portraits: MIT List Visual Arts Center, May 12-July 1, 1990. Cambridge, Mass.: The Center, 1990.

Burson, Nancy. Focus: How your Energy Can Change the World. New York, N.Y.: New York: ibooks ; Distributed by Simon & Schuster, 2004.

Burson, Nancy, Richard Carling, and David Kramlich. Composites: Computer-Generated Portraits. New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986.

Burson, Nancy, and Jeanne McDermott. Faces. Santa Fe, N.M.: Twin Palms, 1993.

Burson, Nancy, et.al. Seeing and Believing: The Art of Nancy Burson. Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms, 2002.