Looking presidential

November 19, 2016 3:30 AM

Amsterdam-based Turkish designer Guney Soykan charts the faces of world leaders. "He decided to bring together a visual record of the people chosen to run their countries – however democratically – over the past 50 years, creating a sort of time-lapse composite photo of one face made up of slivers of all the former leaders. The results vary, from the tiny splinters of men in Turkey's tumultuous political atmosphere to the creepy continuity of North Korea". (via)
posted by lmfsilva (12 comments total)

South Africa really tells the story of the nation, as it transitions from black and white photos, to a coloured photo of a white guy, to photos of people of colour.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:21 AM on November 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

Mod note: One deleted. Sorry, but discussion about the US election / US politics should go in the ongoing thread here.
posted by taz (staff) at 5:36 AM on November 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Great idea!
posted by oceanjesse at 6:35 AM on November 19, 2016

Great execution! You can see all of them as faces. A few leaders were bigger than I expected in the more democratic countries.

Syria and North Korea... shudders. Even when dictators die, the dictatorship lives on.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 8:24 AM on November 19, 2016

OK, my memory is what it is but...I recall that someone/s analyzed peoples opinions and sentiments of other people based upon differences in facial features. They went on to create an algorithm that would predict who would win a political race based solely on faces. They then applied the algorithm retroactively to american presidents and -(don't really remember but for arguments sake/it was in the ballparke)-it was 100% accurate in its predictions. My understanding is that Harding was supposed to have been elected because he looked so damned presidential while in reality being an empty suit. So.....there you go.
posted by Pembquist at 8:59 AM on November 19, 2016

Patently sublime
posted by lazycomputerkids at 10:42 AM on November 19, 2016

Sadat-Mubarak kind of looks like Two-Face
posted by Peter J. Prufrock at 12:27 PM on November 19, 2016

"Syria and North Korea... shudders. Even when dictators die, the dictatorship lives on."

Yeah, they might as well be the same person. You can really see the family similarities.

Meanwhile there's Turkey with so many different men rising and falling it looks almost chaotic, and Cuba - which has three guys, but one is far more important than the others.
posted by Kevin Street at 12:43 PM on November 19, 2016

This is great- my only disappointment was that Australia wasn't represented.

The USA one is weird- with standard term lengths and two term hard limit, it's very even. Looks like nobody in particular and every body.

Lots of stability of leaders during the 80s/90s even in democratic countries.
posted by freethefeet at 1:05 PM on November 19, 2016

I'd never noticed how pointy Putin's ears* are before.

*I'm assuming the one on the other side is the same.
posted by Fuchsoid at 4:25 PM on November 19, 2016

I was sad to see he hadn't attempted Italy.
posted by katemonster at 7:24 PM on November 19, 2016

Italy is the fourth picture on the page (direct link here).
posted by neushoorn at 10:22 AM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]