Portrait Gallery

Joanna Kane: The Somnambulists | Photographic Portraits from Before Photography

22nd January to 6th April 2008 | Scottish National Portrait Gallery | Free

The Somnambulists is a haunting series of photographic portraits taken from a famous collection of phrenological heads now on loan to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Using digital techniques, Joanna Kane reaches into the past to bring figures from Scottish history to life. Animating her portraits to suggest an illusory sense of the living subject of the cast, Kane magically renders photographic likenesses from before the age of photography.