OBSESSION- PROGRESSION- CONFESSION

What if you knew there was a place where you could find things of significant value just laying around, or streaming by on a conveyor belt? Well, that is my world.

In one of my side-lines I imbibe in a popular obsession with an American myth. Actually, several concurrent obsessions, mostly inspired by the love of history and the desire for easy money, that last motivation being the same which drove the outlaws and gamblers of the Old West. But this is much less violent. The myths of “Billy the Kid,” Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, and the gambler Doc Holliday, and recent auction sales of Old West photographs for big dollars have fired a renewed interest in history, and fed an endless search for more original photographs of them. And they could be worth millions. Thus, it seems many Old West enthusiasts have convinced themselves they have found another heretofore unknown image of the West’s most famous mythmakers. But their searches and the results of them are sabotaged by inherent problems. The first and highest wall is general skepticism. Cynicism notwithstanding, there are tens of thousands of antique images constantly marketed on the Internet which offer quiet opportunity for the history buff, as they pour over the old tintypes and cabinet cards as if they are rare coins. But it is just another version of “finding a needle in the haystack.” Never to be discouraged, and impossible odds aside, this search has been my passion for over a decade, and has provided lots of entertainment. My obsession is with facial recognition, the human (and profitable) kind, and how old photographs can expand our knowledge of our history. Meanwhile Western collector auctions have made this search a popular pastime for modern day miners of tin-gold. Every time another image is supposedly “found” of Billy the Kid, or some other Western legend, and millions are supposedly paid for them, the searches are renewed with vigor. Never mind that nobody is going to believe you purchased a rare, unpublished photo of a Western legend on Ebay. Never mind the odds against it, or the difficulty in identifying a person in a photograph from 150 years ago- a person who may rarely have ever been photographed in the first place. Never mind that in some cases, there is only one or two known, authenticated photographs of these persons. And they are usually terrible images, damaged and dull and out of focus. In the case of Doc Holliday, historians have passed around and copied and recopied the same bastardized visage for one hundred years. One of the most famous faces in the American West is a doctored copy of a copy of a copy. When the genre of the American “Western” was born around 1900, writers, artists and cinematographers scavenged collections for photographic resources to help authenticate their works. Retired lawmen and outlaws were hired as consultants and actors, often playing themselves in the first Western movies. The images those first film-makers built on created the foundation for our Western lore. And true or not, that lore became fact. As in many cases since, as in the famous line from the 1962 classic, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” And they did. And we ate it up. There is very slim proof to authenticate a surprising number of famous faces, thought to be famous Western characters or outlaws. In many cases, there is just one photograph traditionally offered up as an authentic portrait. As files and archives have been ravaged over the years, new portraits have emerged, often creating more confusion when, under scrutiny, they did not match. Still publishers were happy to print the local legends, revealing new likenesses of Sam Bass, John Wesley Hardin, Frank and Jesse James, and others, further muddying the waters of time. What is always interesting is the preponderance of finds of a few of the most famous persons, ones worth the highest amount of dollars, while most of the others never seem to turn up. Perhaps the biggest myth is the scarcity of photography in the Old West. Endless waves of tintype photography rise to the surface every week on Internet auctions from the western half of the United States. Many were probably made there, if clothing and hats are any indication. Even the Texas Rangers used a tintype photographer in the 1870’s to ID criminals. About the same time the Pinkertons established their famous “Rogues Gallery” in Chicago. For thirty years frontier photographers invaded every state in the west, capturing valuable photographic records of western history. And obligingly, lawmen eagerly collected images of the most sought-after criminals. But a criminal’s career was typically short, and Sheriff’s drawers got full of obsolete clues. And then the West was won. What would become historic treasures were disposed of, and sometimes were scooped up by far-sighted deputies and family members. Time passed and the dusky images found their way again to the bottom of drawers, family albums, and some went to university collections. Some lost their identity. And that is how some might anonymously slide by in an Internet auction. Clueless descendants, ambivalent about their family histories, sell historic treasures with no idea about what they have. Often their own family stories should raise interest, but they would rather have the immediate money from the garage sale. When recent research turned up some supposedly new and authentic images of Doc Holliday, few folks bothered to notice that they did not match the original famous face, published ad infinitum. In my own search for rare Americana, I have “discovered” my own Doc Holliday doppelgangers. Obviously not all of the “finds,” whether mine or others being touted could be anything more than wishful thinking. But what if one or two were what they appear to be? After collecting a number of possible valuable images to history, I realized that I had to find a way to authenticate my photographs, at least to my own satisfaction, and something more accurate than the less discriminating “facial ID” computer programs. The bar for a match is fairly low for most computer ID programs, and therefore there are suddenly many photographs emerging as supposed matches for famous historical persons. Being a professional artist, and somewhat proficient with Photoshop, as well as being a devoted history researcher, I was determined to figure out something that would provide me the confidence in my discoveries that I needed. More to the point, I needed a way to screen images BEFORE I PURCHASED THEM! Seeing a likeness was no problem, many doppel-seachers can do that. But few “finders” can prove mathematically that they have found anything important. After a portrait passes the facial similarity, historical context and fashion screenings, it will still be anybody’s guess. Computer analysis is woefully inadequate. AI and its cronies are unwilling or unable to provide anything more than superficial comparisons. Face ID will draw upon overall and irrelevant similarities, face shape and even expressions, while AI absorbs all Internet knowledge, and often repeats what urban legend says is probably true. And with increasing “information” available, much of it flawed, and sometimes contradictory, the more confused and unreliable it will be. Poor resolution in the originals is a big problem, and they often need enhancement and cleaning up to be useful for exact comparisons. Given the vagueness of some originals, there will always be reasonable doubt. The acceptance of “close” as being adequate is another fallacy. Given all of the possible failures in the system, nothing below a 90% match should be considered. Therefore, image hunters often tout finds with “high percentages” of authenticity which are merely mediocre doppelgangers. Frequently there are scores of spurious “rare Old West” images being offered on online auctions. I eventually developed my own, quite objective system. I call it Q-5. That’s an abbreviation for “five-point quintangulation.” Now I can screen Victorian faces in minutes and know with 95% certainty, that they are either true historical finds or mere look-alikes. My threshold for an acceptable match is 93%. Given differences in age and health, even two photographs of the same person will not always line up perfectly. A 100% match is almost impossible. I have an admittedly subjective way of grading my images, subtracting points starting from 95% (my highest score for obvious matches) for every misalignment, subtracting a point for every incompatible facial feature, using the original as a base. Ears may move up or down depending on the angle of the photograph, but they should be the same size and shape. If shoulders are visible, they too must reflect the body type of the original. Hairlines can rise with age, but must make sense depending on age. A man does not recover his old hairline. He generally parts his hair in the same place. Facial hair can evolve, especially with criminals, but beards make identification hard because they obscure important features like lips, jaws and chins. Generally, lips and chins get smaller with age, but ears, foreheads and noses get a little bigger, and these things must be taken into account. But in my way of identification, focusing on the most unchangeable features, it does not take long to disqualify a candidate. Every face has a unique design, based on measurable relationships between facial features. Yes, God made every individual unique and special, a one of a kind. Even twins are not exactly the same. And doppelgangers lose a great deal of their mystery when carefully analyzed. The mathematical relationships between the elements of every face are special and rarely replicated. Add to that the shape of ears, color of eyes and hair, length of neck, type of eyelids and arch of the eyebrows, and you find that faces are like fingerprints. And actual look-alikes are extremely rare. Starting with the eyes, I carefully pinpoint a minimum of five, but as many as a dozen key points on the “original” face, each of which has a distinct and exact mathematical relationship with all of the other features on the face, and superimpose those points on the face in question. Once the irises of the eyes are marked, they become the key to a match. The variance of the eyes and the distance between them will sabotage 99 % of the candidates. ALL of the points- eyes, nostrils, upper lip, chin, (that’s actually 6) must line up very well, or it is a failure. There can be no exceptions. Sure, the age of the person must be considered. As people age, they lose teeth and this raises the chin, and the jaw skin might sag a little. Still, the mathematical relationship between the various features of the face change very little, especially between the eyes and the nostrils and upper lip. No matter how old a person is, these relationships, based on skull structure, change very little. The distance between the irises will never change, unless a person’s eyeballs shrink significantly, and this would be extremely rare. My Q-5 measuring technique disqualified some of my favorite “finds,” more than I wished, but it as also solidified other finds which I hope will make them more valuable. For me this journey began with some positive ID tintype purchases I made years ago. Unfortunately, the successes gave me too much confidence, and I was soon swimming in delusion. I bought too many doppelgangers before I began to wonder about the future of my growing collection. It was worthless without some proof. Nobody was as observant or as lucky as I thought was. I did not want to be another wishful thinker, wishing somebody believed my discoveries. I was eventually ready to retire many of my finds as mere look-alikes, in order to authenticate some of them. Here are some of my finds. But I start with a study of Doc Holliday. It is to illustrate the challenge to all historians, who love the lore of the West. The main problem is that the recent finds of Doc Holliday do not compare well with the original, much tampered-with historic photo most often attributed as him. If one or both of the later finds are him, then what do we make of the “original”? My Q-5 comparison helps to reveal the significant dissimilarities. Did Holliday have a pointed or squared chin? A broad or narrow forehead? Still, the key features line up well, in fact earning my highest score, (I never score anything above 95%) yet the ears alone would have disqualified them. Probably no one knows for sure the source of the “original” portrait of Doc Holliday. Should it be grandfathered in, since it was produced and published during a time when memories were fresh and there were firsthand associates to authenticate it? Or do we abandon it for “better” scholarship? Bottom line, they cannot all be Doc Holliday. At best, the original is iconic, but the least reliable, given the obvious retouching and “restoration” done to it, illustrated well by all of the varying versions. Poor photography often necessitated artistic enhancement. And in the process, it was typical to make the ears smaller on sitters, eyes larger and more expressive, the hair perfect. Might early photographers or publishers have doctored their print of Holliday for clarity or dramatic impact? Most likely. My Q-5 technique has found similar discrepancies with other famous photographs, and proves that publishing and law enforcement standards were lacking for sure. It has also lent credibility to other photos which have otherwise raised considerable controversy. It also renders 95% of modern discoveries as tin-gold fever. I have fared a little better, with perhaps 40% of my finds surviving the scrutiny of Q-5. Perhaps my greatest finds have been so obvious there is no proof necessary, when there are several famous persons found in the same photograph, and these persons not only knew each other, but might well have posed together. What are the odds of such doppelgangers, all the correct respective ages, finding one another, at the right time in history to pose? Still, the finds are even more impressive when all of the persons recognized in the photo pass the Q-5 test. I call them my Grand Slams. Tin-gold seekers should not be discouraged by my exactitude. They are in the hunt, so they are already ahead of the game. But first they must put aside their delusions. I would never have found mine had I (1) not believed that I could and would find them, and (2) had failed to search diligently almost every day. And (3) had a process to eliminate doppelgangers. Intriguing or coincidental similarities are not proof. A drooping mustache is not automatically Wyatt Earp. An insolent snarl with big ears is not necessarily Billy the Kid. Unfortunately, if you want to add to our history, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. Mathematical, geometric alignment is the basis for that proof. My knowledge of history, Victorian fashion, antique forms of photography and the general identities of the West’s most famous personalities was invaluable. But it also took something completely untrainable: An imagination capable of recognizing a person or persons from an angle or a situation never before seen. And a creativity to devise a scientific method to solidify my hunches. That is where the luck finally kicked in. I think it was Hipshot, the beloved gunfighter in the old Rick O’Shay comic strip, who once quipped, “You might notice, it’s the most diligent hunter that always seems the luckiest.” Or something like that. It is true that the “camera does not lie.” Nor do photographs. But many photograph collectors lie to themselves. Nobody can argue with a 12-point buck, or a Clovis arrowhead. But the image hunter must be more critical, maintaining fierce objectivity. And must find a way to prove his finds, beyond the shadow of doubt- and the deceptive light which passes through a camera lens.