Future Face: Image, Identity, Innovation

The human face has been admired, interpreted, disfigured, decorated, puzzled over, and reconstructed from earliest times. But what do faces mean? How should we interpret expressions? Does the face indicate personality? What makes our faces unique? Far from the world of facelifts and Botox, science is now embarking on undreamed-of facial reconstruction—a full-face transplant will soon be available as the ultimate new identity under the FBI’s Witness Protection Program. But what will such drastic surgery do to our perception of others—and ourselves? Future Face is a timely and thought-provoking study. Sandra Kemp, Director of Research at the Royal College of Art, is curator of the 2004–2005 “Future Face” exhibition at the Science Museum, London.