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American Morning

Exhibit Looks Closely at Faces

Aired March 22, 2002 - 08:57   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Ever wonder what you'd look like decades from now? Ever contemplate how you'd look as another race? Well, CNN's Jeanne Moos found herself face to face with both new wrinkles and a different pigment at an exhibit focusing on the face.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Don't believe much of what you see in this story. For instance, if you combine Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren, and Marilyn Monroe, what do you get?

BRAGAN THOMAS, GREY ART GALLERY, NYU: This is not a photograph of a person who ever walked the face of the earth.

MOOS: Ever seen this guy before? He is 55 percent Ronald Reagan, 45 percent former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, with a dash of Maggie Thatcher and others thrown in, in proportion to the size of each country's nuclear arsenal.

Or, if you prefer your composites religious...

NANCY BURSON, ARTIST: It's Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha together.

MOOS: Think of Nancy Burson as the mother of morphing.

THOMAS: Nancy, believe it or not, is one of the people who invented this process, which is now so commonplace.

MOOS: And here you probably thought Michael Jackson invented morphing. But wouldn't you rather morph yourself? Here at New York University's Grey Gallery, can you step into the age machine...

BURSON: You have to line up your eyes...

MOOS: ...and see how you'll look 25 years from now. The machine matches your face with a database of real aged faces.

BURSON: It is kind of like taking a wrinkle mask off someone else and putting it on you.

MOOS: Nancy Burson has even aged Barbie, the doll. She has also aged missing people to help police find them. Aton Pates (ph) was kidnapped when he was six. Here is how he would have looked at 13. And though Aton was never found, the FBI purchased Nancy's software.

BURSON: There were at least four children that were brought home from the process.

MOOS: Oscar Wilde once said, "a man's face is his autobiography, a woman's face is her work of fiction." So what to make of these faces, entitled...

BURSON: He/shes.

MOOS (on camera): He/shes.

(voice-over): Portraits of people who don't mind making you guess at their gender.

BURSON: He. She. She.

MOOS (on camera): She for sure.

THOMAS: This is a series entitled, "Guys Who Look Like Jesus."

BURSON: I ran an ad, I ran several ads...

MOOS: And the ad said...

BURSON: Jesus look-alikes wanted, all ethnicities.

MOOS: Who are you to say these guys look like Jesus? We don't know what Jesus looked like.

BURSON: And that's the whole point.

That one reminds me most of Sunday school.

MOOS (voice-over): Lately, Nancy has been photographing faith healers, those who claim to heal with their energy. She's experienced it herself, and says it worked. She blamed her own energy field for problems we kept having with our wireless microphones.

BURSON: ...the building machines that we show people...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is weird.

MOOS: Our favorite morphing experience was in the Human Race Machine, change your race. Here I am as an African-American. As a wit once wrote, my face, I don't mind it, because I'm behind it.

Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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