When a dead body is found unrecognizable, whether due to obliteration of soft tissue or the damage caused by the passage of time, a team of forensic artists is called in to create an artistic reconstruction of the deceased’s visage. These artists use the victim’s skull, along with fiberglass, clay and intuition, to mold an approximate likeness of the deceased. Photos of these facial reconstructions are then publicized with the hopes of identifying the anonymous victims.
Photographer Arne Svenson took interest in this strange artistic ritual, described by Stacy Dacheux as “a mask or doll with a troubling echo, seemingly touched by the hands of Frankenstein.” Svenson began photographing the death masks, giving the forensic tools the same artistic attention as a living, breathing subject. Before Svenson’s lens, the facial reconstructions gain a strange life force, taking on the unsettling presence of a haunted marionette. The series, entitled “Unspeaking Likeness,” gives an unflinching glimpse of lives cut short and the unspoken mysteries that may never be solved.
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