Since the inception of her artistic career, Nancy Burson has been interested in the interaction between art and science and she’s among the first artists to apply digital technology to the genre of photographic portraiture. She can be considered the “Pioneer of computer-generated portraits”.

Her work is unique because she was the first to introduce composite portraits to the electronic age. She is best known for her pioneering work in morphing technologies: using computer programs to change or layer photos to show a new aspect of age, race or character of the original subject. Not only that: it is also about interventions based on the fusion of two or more images through a deforming system that works changing its reality, aging and rejuvenating photographs and thus projecting a portrait into the future or into the past. Digitally combining and manipulating images of often well-known individuals, including movie stars and world leaders, Burson examines political issues, gender, race, and standards of beauty.

In collaboration with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Burson began to produce computer-generated composite portraits in the late 1970s to early 1980s. In 1981, she developed a software that could be used to “age” a human face, still used by FBI to help locate victims of child abduction.