The muscle of attention (left); Eyebrow contraction due to bright light (right)

Art Historical Context

Step into the intriguing world of 19th science with *The muscle of attention (left); Eyebrow contraction to bright light (right, a pair of albumen prints French neurologist and photographer Guillaume-Benjamin-A Duchenne (de Boulogne). Created between 1854 and 1856 and printed in 1862, these (22.1 × 16. cm each) meticulously capture isolated facial muscle contractions on a subject's face, revealing the precise mechanics of human expression. Duchenne pioneered the use of faradic electricity to stimulate facial nerves, producing authentic expressions unmarred by voluntary acting. Featured in his seminal 1862 book *Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine*, these photographs bridged medicine, physiology, and early psychology. They influenced Charles Darwin's *The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals* (1872), laying groundwork for modern facial recognition studies and emotion research. The left image highlights the "muscle of attention" (likely the frontalis), while the right shows involuntary brow furrowing from light—raw glimpses into involuntary human responses. As albumen prints, these works exemplify mid-19th-century photography's technical brilliance, with its rich tonal range and fine detail on paper coated with egg whites and silver salts. Housed in the National Gallery of Art's photography collection (CPH Department), courtesy of the W. Bruce and Delaney H. Lundberg Fund, they remind us how art and science intertwined to decode the human face.

About the Artist

Guillaume-Benjamin-Amant Duchenne (de Boulogne)

Guillaume-Benjamin-Amant Duchenne de Boulogne (1806–1875) was a French neurologist whose pioneering use of photography to document human facial expression placed him at the unique intersection of medical science and visual art. Though primarily a physician rather than an artist in the conventional sense, his photographic work — produced in the 1850s and 1860s — has been recognized as a significant...