Galton devoted many years of study to the use of "Composite Portraiture", in which photographs of different subjects were combined, through repeated limited exposure, to produce a single blended image. Galton perfected the technical details of the method by repeated trial-and-error over many years, using apparatus of his own design. He was especially interested in the use of these composites to test if there was a recognizable criminal type revealed by them, but his experiments in this direction proved that, within the range of data available to him, no such type revealed itself. The portraits of criminals tended to blend away into normality.
Galton tried using Composite Portraits in many other applications, including identification of the chronically sick by the appearance of a "sick type". The results were, again, ambiguous at best. He was not entirely wrong about the link between physical appearance and psychological traits, however, as modern studies have shown that, for very large samples, there is indeed a weak but significant link between physical peculiarities and traits like criminality.
1878 | 'Composite portraits made by combining those of many different persons into a single figure.' | Nature 18 : 97-100 | |
1879 | "Composite Portraits" | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 8 : 132-144 | |
1879 | 'Composite portraits made by combining those of many different persons into a single figure.' | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 8 : 132--48 | |
1879 | 'Les images generiques' | La Revue Scientifique 17 : 221-5 | |
1879 | 'Generic images.' | Nineteenth Century 6 (July) : 157-69 | |
1879 | Combined Portraits, and the Combination of Sense Impressions Generally. | Proceedings of the Birmingham Philosophical Society 2 : 26-29 | |
1879 | 'Generic images.' | Proceedings of the Royal Institution 9 : 161-70 | |
1881 | 'Composite portraiture.' | Photographic Journal 5 : 140-6 | |
1881 | Composite portraiture.' | Photographic News 25 : 316-7, 332-3 | |
1882 | 'Photographic chronicles from childhood to age.' | Fortnightly Review 31 : 26-31 | |
1882 | An inquiry into the physiognomy of phthisis by the method of "composite portraiture".[With F. A. Mahomed] | Guy's Hospital Reports 25 (February) : 475-493 | |
1882 | "The Physiognomy of Consumption" | Nature 26 (February 3) : 389 | |
1885 | 'Photographic composites.' | Photographic News 29 : 234-45 | |
1886 | 'Exhibition of composite photographs of skulls by Francis Galton' | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 15 : 390-1 | |
1886 | Note on Jacobs - Jewish Composite Portraits. | Journal of the Anthropological Institute 15 : 62 | |
1887 | 'Photography and silhouettes.' [Letters]. | Photographic News 31 : 429-30, 462 | |
1888 | 'Composite portraiture. A communication from Francis Galton.' | Photographic News 32 : 257 | |
1888 | Composite Portraiture. | Scientific American Supplement 25 (650, June 16) : 10381 | |
1898 | 'Photographic records of pedigree stock.' [Letter] | Live Stock Journal (September 30) | |
1898 | 'Photographic measurement of horses and other animals.' | Nature 57 : 230-2 | |
1898 | 'Photographic records of pedigree stock.' | Nature 58 : 584 | |
1898 | 'Photographic records of pedigree stock.'. | Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science : 597-603 | |
1899 | 'The photography of the premium horses.' | Seventh Report of the Royal Commission on Horse Breeding, Appendix G : 12-5 | |
1900 | 'Analytical portraiture.' [Letter] | Nature 62 : 320 | |
1900 | 'Analytical photography.' | Photographic Journal 25 : 135-8 | |
1906 | 'Request for prints of photographic portraits.' [Letter] | Nature 73 : 534 |