Reading The Face: Lavaters Treatise on Physiognomy

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate the impact that Johann Caspar Lavater's system of reading the face (a system called physiognomy) had on the development of portrait photography in nineteenth century Britain. Lavater published his major work on physiognomy in the 18th century but because it was aimed at discerning moral character, many of its elements were taken up and used by those nineteenth-century race scientists and state functionaries who, concerned about the nation's health, used photography to identify Britain's so-called degenerate classes. Focused on in particular are the key ideas and visual conventions that this style of portraiture took from Lavater - conventions that categorised..