"...May she be granted beauty, and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass; for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness, and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend." --- from A Prayer for My Daughter by W.B. Yeats

I have neither better, nor further words after Yeats. Let's have a look at the technicals..

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Technical Notes:

Some of the base photographs are my photographs from the skulls in museums. Others are public domain images. In either case, each photograph has been two or three times edited since early 2000 before being considered for this final piece. Once I decided to include them, a final editing, notably in Photoshop, has been done.

While it resulted in slight imperfections and a lot of repeat work, I specifically chose 9 images and 9 states for it symbolized a grid total in my mind. Furthermore it allowed a very diverse set of visual outcomes that would range from unbearably bizarre to strikingly attractive.

Finally I spent considerable time in trying to decide on the layer images which ended up being possible alternative sets rather than layer specific line ups. Now I feel I have compressed 9 images, 9 layer images and countless possibilities in to one image. This is one of the strangest days of my life..

Portraits Sans Temps by Hulki Okan Tabak Very exclusively, literally only for Async Art, 2021