Wot, no Gorbachev?

December 12, 2007 11:43 AM

Guess Who? Noma Bar depicts famous faces using symbols of what they are known for as facial features. More samples here (scroll down), and on the publisher's site.

nyt login (if needed): metafilter.com pass: forbaylink

Articles from which the larger NYT illustrations were lifted:
1 2 3 4 5

posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (28 comments total)

Those eight years of Hebrew school finally paid off! From top to bottom:

Osama Bin Laden
David Beckham
Luciano Pavarotti
Uri Geller
Ozzy Osbourne
Steven Spielberg
Woody Allen

Amazingly, I even recognized a couple of them without having to read the captions.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:52 AM on December 12, 2007

And now I find out that the names, in English, are in each image's title attribute. I fail at the Internet.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:53 AM on December 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

Pretty neat, though some seem pretty forced, like Putin or Ozzy...
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:05 PM on December 12, 2007

Voody Allen.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:05 PM on December 12, 2007

I really like this guy's work. There's something old-fashioned about it, and it has a real economy and elegance.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:06 PM on December 12, 2007

Ozzy? I first kind of assumed it was Naomi Klein (!). And I hadn't noticed the mouse-over titles, nor do I read Hebrew. Thanks!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:06 PM on December 12, 2007

Maggie Thatcher was in the Olympics?
posted by kuujjuarapik at 12:07 PM on December 12, 2007

Also, can someone explain the Woody Allen one for me? I-I-I just don't get it, you know, it's driving me crazy.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:08 PM on December 12, 2007

Also, can someone explain the Woody Allen one for me? I-I-I just don't get it, you know, it's driving me crazy.

*pulls Noma Bar into the frame*

"You know nothing of my work."
posted by cortex at 12:10 PM on December 12, 2007 [2 favorites]

Bend it like בקהאם
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:10 PM on December 12, 2007 [4 favorites]

This face looks familiar.
posted by Floydd at 12:20 PM on December 12, 2007

The Woody Allen one features landmarks from London (the London Eye, etc.). I imagine the illustration accompanied an article about Match Point, as all of a sudden he'd forsaken New York for London as setting.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:24 PM on December 12, 2007

Interesting. I was really impressed by his John Donne illustration when I saw it in the NYT. Helpful to see his other work...
posted by bullitt 5 at 12:27 PM on December 12, 2007

Wow! These are great!
posted by EatTheWeek at 12:49 PM on December 12, 2007

These are nifty and clever, although the one of Diana kind of rubbed me the wrong way.
posted by tentacle at 12:55 PM on December 12, 2007

These illustrations are interesting because they serve as examples for how quickly our brains are able to assimilate visual information according to shape relationships when we're trying to recognize other human beings. These caricatures are inexact and minimal in the way the features are presented, yet simple shape relationships (the skull shape, the placement of a nose barring any other defining facial elements) still result in the ability for the viewer to make an educated guess as to who the subject is.

This stuff always fascinates me. Another good example of the phenomena of being able to fill in these kinds of blanks with limited information is the ever-popular minipops.
posted by stagewhisper at 1:13 PM on December 12, 2007

shakespeherian: "The Woody Allen one features landmarks from London (the London Eye, etc.). I imagine the illustration accompanied an article about Match Point, as all of a sudden he'd forsaken New York for London as setting."

Ah, right, I mistakenly thought it was some sort of clockwork theme.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 1:18 PM on December 12, 2007

The Putin one sure is elegant. But I'd never have guessed who it was. I, too, was wondering what Margaret Thatcher's role with the Olympics was.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 2:28 PM on December 12, 2007

I thought the top one from the first link was Dick Cheney.
posted by sveskemus at 3:03 PM on December 12, 2007

The Woody Allen one features landmarks from London (the London Eye, etc.). I imagine the illustration accompanied an article about Match Point, as all of a sudden he'd forsaken New York for London as setting.

I'm pretty sure it's actually an Annie Hall reference - the bit where Alvy is talking about his childhood on Coney island. Here is an article about this - see the fifth paragraph, about whether the movie was autobiographical or not. I'm pretty sure I remember his house being under the rollercoaster,(not the ferris wheel) in the movie, but there must ahve been something about a ferris wheel too.
posted by naoko at 3:07 PM on December 12, 2007

...little help here on the "depicts" link?....
posted by pax digita at 3:45 PM on December 12, 2007

The Woody Allen one is definitely London — his nose is the distinctive 'Gherkin' — so the eye must be the Millennium Wheel.
posted by matthewr at 4:02 PM on December 12, 2007

I thought Ozzy was Johnny Depp. Seriously. You've got a pirate theme and then what looks like mouse ears...

But the Spielberg one is my favorite, because it makes sense and really does look like him.
posted by misha at 4:08 PM on December 12, 2007

pax digita, it's linked in the [mi].
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:13 PM on December 12, 2007

Crap, you're right about the Gherkin, matthewr - wow, that thing is ugly.
If it weren't for that I would have liked my interpretation better though - has more to do with Woody Allen than London does.
posted by naoko at 5:27 PM on December 12, 2007

Precisely. It must have been an especially-for-Match Point made illustration, else it boggles the mind why it wouldn't have been New York, or anything but London really.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:30 PM on December 12, 2007

Depicting famous faces is certainly better than defacing famous pictures.
posted by sour cream at 11:01 PM on December 12, 2007

gnfti, I thought that looked like him, but what threw me was the imagery of bombs falling toward a warship -- all I could think of was Pearl Harbor and the war in the Pacific. Eisenhower commanded the Normandy invasion, but there weren't a lot of antiship strikes involved there. Deft artwork but confusing military-history reference.
posted by pax digita at 4:37 AM on December 13, 2007