Most of us have an image of our ideal selves cemented in our minds, an image we can see clear as day in our heads but can't seem to properly render or describe so that others can see how we'd really like to look.
But photographer Scott Chasserot came up with a pretty clever way to discover how people wish they looked based on their brain waves for his idealized portrait series Original Ideal:
Chasserot took simple and unadorned head shots of his volunteers, then by using an editing software, he made dozens of altered versions based on the “scientifically established canons of beauty.”
By presenting the edited photos to the volunteers while they wore EEG headsets, Chasserot was able to analyze their brain waves and identify which version they preferred the most based on positive neural reactions. The preferred photo was then labeled as their “ideal” appearance.
“What do we find instinctively beautiful in the human face and how does this translate to self-image? What assumptions would we make about another person if we could see their ideal self-image? Original Ideal combines portrait photography and neuroscience to isolate the subjects’ ideal self image, a cerebrally sincere preference obtained by circumventing conscious thought.”
Original Ideal from Scott Chasserot on Vimeo.
-Via design you trust