“As we look we search, compare ourselves…We become part of what we view. This sense of common purpose is intensified by the unremarkable faces set before us. Their ordinariness, and the wealth of revealing (comforting) detail that frames each face, begs us to make confident assertions about class, age, gender, fashion and personality. Science invites us to delve deeper. The twentieth century gave us the double helix. Each one of these supposedly average faces represents a genetic apex reaching back millennia. Beneath each one of these 101 facial surfaces lies a journey of cosmic complexity. Somehow it seems appropriate. Each face unique. Yet each the product of millions of others. Unremarkably remarkable.”
Martin Herron, essay from The Face of the Century, Do Publishing, 1999