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Describing someone as average-looking is rarely seen as a compliment.
But most of us would be quite happy to look like a computer-generated depiction of the 'average' English woman, Welsh woman, or even the average Burmese.
More than 100 women of 41 different nationalities and ethnicities were photographed in cities all over the world in an effort to find common regional features.
The photos were carefully laid over each other using a computer program to create an individual image for each area - and the biggest surprise is that the 'common' faces are all quite beautiful.
There are, of course, regional differences in face shapes, colours and features.
Peruvians and Iranians have bigger mouths, Ethiopians and Samoans have curlier hair, and fringes seem to be big in Latvia and Poland.
But most of the photos depict a woman who seems to be in her early twenties - which definitely is not the average age of any nationality.
The study also throws up other results that suggest that maybe the samples weren't quite as wide-ranging as they could have been.
The average South African, for example, definitely shouldn't be pale-skinned - only 9.2 per cent of the population define themselves as white.
South African Photographer Mike inspired the images with a web project called The Face of Tomorrow compiling the faces of various cities.
Mike, who lives in Istanbul, travels the world taking photos of the first 100 people he can persuade to pose in each place - noting their nationality every time.
The 46-year-old got the idea for his project when he was studying at London's Goldsmiths College.
He said: 'Sitting on the underground train, I was intrigued by the sheer diversity of the place – Somalis, Indians, Americans, Zimbabweans, Scandinavians and a hundred other nationalities vying for their place in the metropolis.
'I thought: “What is this place, what is a Londoner?”
'I thought if one could merge all the people in a place like London one would be looking at the future of that place – one would have some notion of what a Londoner is or will become.'
(Agencies)
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形容哪个人长着一张“大众脸”很少被看作赞美。
但如果相貌类似于电脑合成的英格兰女性、威尔士女性、甚至是缅甸女性的“大众脸”，大部分人都会很开心。
在寻找不同地区“大众脸”的活动中，摄影师拍摄了上百名来自41个全球不同国家和民族的女性的照片。
摄影师随后使用电脑程序，将这些照片仔细叠加起来，合成了每个地区的“大众脸”。最大的惊喜之处在于，“大众脸”都非常漂亮。
当然，不同地区的“大众脸”在脸型、肤色和特征上各有差别。
从合成照片可以看出，秘鲁人和伊朗人的嘴大，埃塞俄比亚和萨摩亚人头发卷曲，拉脱维亚和波兰人的刘海偏长。
但大多数照片都描绘的是20岁出头的女性，这绝非某个国家民众的平均年龄。
人们也对这项研究提出了质疑，认为取样照片范围不够广。
例如，南非“大众脸”的脸色不应该是白的。在南非，仅有9.2%的民众自认为是白人。
南非摄影师迈克创建了一个名为“明天的面孔”的网站，搜集了来自不同城市的女性的照片。
迈克居住在伊斯坦布尔，他环游世界，首先为来自不同地区的100名答应取照的女性拍摄了照片，并注明国籍。
46岁的迈克在伦敦金史密斯学院读书时想出了这个主意。
他说：“当我坐在地铁里时，看着来自世界各地的人们在伦敦忙于谋生，索马里人、印度人、美国人、津巴布韦人、北欧人，以及来自100多个其它国家的人们，忽然就有了这个灵感。”
“我想：‘这是哪里？伦敦人又是什么样的？”
“我想，如果能把住在这里的所有人混在一起，比如伦敦，就能看到这个城市未来人群的模样，就可以想出伦敦人一般长什么样，未来又会变成什么样”。 |
