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				Portrait of Michael Hartmann, a cover photo of The Invisible Body exhibition catalogue, The Museum Wiesbaden, Germany, 1999/2000.
				The Invisible Body An experiment in portraiture using advanced DNA sequencing methods and lucid reflection on the part of the artist interacting with a selection of people and the specific social environment. A LAST SUPPER for WIESBADEN ..., A LAST SUPPER for NEW YORK ... The Museum Wiesbaden invited me to come to Wiesbaden, Germany in summer 1998 to begin The Invisible Body, exhibited at the museum in fall, 1999. The museum has important collections including modern and contemporary art, ancient and Roman art, and a natural history collection noted for it's beautiful butterflies. Recent major contemporary exhibitions in addition to my own include Robert Mangold, Agnes Martin, Jochen Gerz, and Donald Judd. After careful consideration, a small number of people from Wiesbaden and the Rhein/Main area were chosen for portrayal, as were a similar number from New York. The organizing principal behind the format is Leonardo's masterwork, The Last Supper. While making these artworks I employed advanced DNA sequencing procedures which use laser and computer technology to record details of the chemical and genetic configurations deep within the cells of the people I've chosen to make a portrait of. I combine the DNA sequence or chromosomes derived from the blood of my sitter with an image which I create with a camera. I do not arrive at this image by putting the person in front of the camera, rather, I allow the genetic depiction to refer to their physicality. This frees me to make the image with the person in mind. The work becomes a visual elucidation of my musings about the person, which is elaborated through the selection of a theme and the inclusion of details of my choosing. In my approach to portraiture the person is not defined, captured, or categorized. The portrait evolves as a meditation, a contemplation of the invisible body. In formatting the project, I drew inspiration from Leonardo's scientific approach to The Last Supper, in which twelve persons are portrayed along with the One, the central figure who is both person and leitmotif, in a painting whose composition reveals the most advanced geometry of Renaissance Europe. Leonardo absorbed the advanced mathematics of his day through his collaboration with Fra Luca Pacioli during the years 1496-1498 while illustrating Luca's text De Divina Proportione. My fascination with The Last Supper as a model for a portrait project is based on the simple beauty of Leonardo's use of mathematics, imagery, and the thematic exploration of the leading social narrative of his time to explore profound human concerns through portraiture. Leonardo lived in Milano and sketched and researched for two years while planning his painting. His Last Supper combines painted portraits and mathematics while including the people of Milano in his work. Using the Da Vinci model for my inspiration, I addressed these concerns in our time, in my way, using our technology. The Invisible Body is not a religious project, and my theme is not about religious belief vs. biological determinism. By combining the genetic information as logos with open, subjective images, I am suggesting a multiplicity in the identity of my subjects, a multiplicity which allows for any behavior or any belief. Specific chemical information is presented in the artwork, while leaving everything else about the person entirely free for interpretation. When we look at one of my portraits we are not looking at the shirt or hairdo of the person and everything this refers to, to social factors. We are not seeing people according to their race or profession. We are looking past these things, we are looking a little deeper. The DNA sample itself represents a very small detail within the genome of the person portrayed. It represents a fragment, a coded model describing a particular physicality. This particular physicality includes elements of heredity, of hereditary physicality, what one can call the long body. Every living thing is the product of successful ancestry. We are usually born with the ability to heal, grow, procreate etc. My portraits are reflections, meditations on the individual and the long body and it is the person as subject, the ecstatic, which interests me most. My portraits contradict notions of biological determinism. The terms transmitter, receptor, enabler, transformer, among others, are terms which apply to human consciousness, mobility, and chemical transformation. Counterparts to these words are embodied in chemical actions and interactions. These are signal terms which apply to both people and to cellular interaction. One can describe people as having these qualities in their character and I sometimes use these terms in considering the persons I will portray in this project. I choose people who are essential to the life of the city, for the work embraces this notion of the specific city, the city as cell. Anyone is a candidate for a portrait, regardless of their endeavor, or lack thereof. I am mindful of the trust which accompanies the giving of a genetic sample by an individual to me. I do not wish to betray this trust or to divert attention from the essential themes in my work. The people I make portraits of are people I find interesting, approachable and diverse. Some background ... My first collaboration in 1976 with the cytobiology department of New York University Medical School was quite modest: I borrowed some karyotypes with interesting shapes and re-created them as bronze casts of about one meter in length, including them in an exhibition at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, where I was just completing the sculpture program. This artistic interest in genetics remained very much a background interest while I traveled, lived and created photography projects in Germany and Switzerland, and eventually during several years working on books, exhibitions, and professional photography in New York. My interest reawakened in 1987. I had just interrupted a project called AWE which allowed me to travel around the world photographing people looking at the heavens at night, trying to find Halley's Comet. My previous book, THE RED COUCH, A PORTRAIT OF AMERICA had also been a macro-world project, encompassing a people and it's clicheed mythologies. I had spent four years traveling throughout America photographing people in their typical environments on my red velvet couch. I chose instead to move inward, and to look at people differently. During my red couch project I recall a day with Dr. Paul Schimmel in the genetics lab at M.I.T. Our conversations were about art and genetics, information as code, chemistry or form as language. I began to call scientists and chat with them about their work. I soon learned that there were no real procedures for sequencing DNA which yielded an individually specific result. Existing procedures required comparison with a sample. It was all about forensics. Leading research scientists suggested I contact the folks at Applied Biosystems in California because they were manufacturing the equipment for PCR and their research lab was open to new ideas- they needed to be responsive to the needs of their client labs while designing equipment, chemistry, and software. The Journal CLINICAL CHEMISTRY published a procedure by the ABI team exploring the HLA-DQ alpha region in an experiment which I asked them to design, for which used my blood. At the time, whole blood samples were used, rather than synthetic blood, and mine was used, as I'd requested the procedure be developed. James D. Watson had refered me and the research team saw merit in the proposal. I have used this now ubiquitous procedure and other, updated procedures in my work since then. Today, I am interested in a procedure which yields a DNA sequence which is highly particular to the individual. I am working with advanced genetics labs, sequencing samples which I supply. Appropriate working procedures, liability issues, etc. are easily discussed and worked out, provided there is an interest in the exhibition project at hand.