Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Allen C. Browne
Taken: February 16, 2015
Caption: Barack Obama
Additional Description: This 3–D printed portrait of Barack Obama can be found in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.

“Before the development of photography in th early nineteenth century, artists created life masks to capture an accurate likeness of a person. Life and death masks also helped memorialize individuals. Phrenology, the pseudoscience of reading character through facial features and the shape of the head, also fueled interest in life and death masks in the nineteenth century.

In 2014 President Barack Obama became the first sitting president to have his likeness captured with 3–D imaging and printing technologies. The Smithsonian's Digitization Program Office created this high–resolution 1:1 scale 3–D image by combining a series of digital photographs with data from patterned light scanners. The resulting image captures, with great accuracy, the actual features of the subject, as opposed to a portrait artist's interpretation of those features.

This is one of a number of the Portrait Gallery's likenesses of President Obama. The president's official portrait for the museum's ‘America's Presidents’ installation will be commissioned at a later time.” — National Portrait Gallery
Submitted: June 11, 2015, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland.
Database Locator Identification Number: p310958
File Size: 2.280 Megabytes

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