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In 2013 the artists became interested in a Russian facial recognition system that was developed to capture surveillance images on the streets of Moscow. Using multiple cameras the technology pieced together fragments of faces to create 3D life masks that could be rotated in space and scrutinised against a database. The mathematicians who built the system coined the term non-collaborative portraiture to describe the technology and for Broomberg and Chanarin it heralded a new epoch in the history of portraiture; one in which the fragile flow of power between the photographer and the subject has become irrevocably damaged.

Co-opting this device, Broomberg & Chanarin constructed their own taxonomy of portraits in contemporary Russia that rely heavily on the oeuvre of two 20th Century German artists. August Sander produced over 300 portraits of archetypal German workers during the Weimar Republic – from the baker to the philosopher to the revolutionary. His project, to create a comprehensive archive of society, was conceptually and formally rigorous. His subjects are positioned centre frame. Always looking into camera. Always heroic in relation to the lens. But the result, retrospectively viewed through the lens of the 2nd World War becomes unexpectedly melancholic, even sinister.

Sander’s contemporary, Helmar Lerski, also categorised his subjects according to profession. Lerski however rejected the singular, heroic, full body portrait. Instead he insisted on repetitive close-ups that convey a powerful sense of claustrophobia; and always multiple views of the same faces shown from different viewpoints. Unlike Sander's humanistic approach, Lerski insisted that you could tell nothing from the surface of the skin.

Echoing both Sander's and Lerski’s projects, Broomberg & Chanarin have made a series of portraits cast according to professions. Using the Russian facial recognition technology they produced over a thousand haunting portraits, disembodied faces, that interrogate the genre of portraiture in our time.

Their portraits are produced with little if any human interaction. They are low resolution and fragmented. The success of these images are determined by how precisely this machine can identify its subject: the characteristics of the nose, the eyes, the chin, and how these three intersect. Nevertheless they cannot help being portraits of individuals, struggling and often failing to negotiate a civil contract with state power.

In collaboration with The ƒ/Ø Project the artists have rendered a selection of their portraits as lampblack carbon pigment transfer prints on hand-coated paper. The striking collision of contemporary digital photography with a traditional 19th century printing technique emphasises the ghostly appearance of these disembodied faces and recalls the early applications of photography as a tool of surveillance and control.

Adam Broomberg (born 1970, Johannesburg, South Africa) and Oliver Chanarin (born 1971, London, UK) are artists living and working between London and Berlin. They are professors of photography at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg and teach on the MA Photography & Society programme at The Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague which they co-designed. Together they have had numerous solo exhibitions most recently at The Centre Georges Pompidou (2018) and the Hasselblad Center (2017). Their participation in international group shows include the Yokohama Trienniale (2017), Documenta, Kassel (2017), The British Art Show 8 (2015-2017), Conflict, Time, Photography at Tate Modern (2015); Shanghai Biennale (2014); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014); Tate Britain (2014), and the Gwanju Biennale (2012). Their work is held in major public and private collections including Pompidou, Tate, MoMA, Yale, Stedelijk, V&A, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Cleveland Museum of Art, and Baltimore Museum of Art. Major awards include the ICP Infinity Award (2014) for Holy Bible, and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2013) for War Primer 2. Broomberg and Chanarin are the winners of the Arles Photo Text Award 2018 for their paper back edition of War Primer 2, published by MACK.