Lisa Bailey spent years building faces from bone for the FBI, so that someone who had loved that person might recognise them.
Forensic art is the one place where appearance stops being a matter of taste and becomes a matter of evidence. There is no styling, no flattery, no aspiration. There is a skull on a bench, a set of averages that nobody actually matches, and a decision about which version of a face is likely enough to be recognised on the evening news by a mother, a brother, a friend.
We wrote to her because almost nobody thinks about looks this way.
Everywhere else, a face is something you present. Here it is something you reconstruct from what is left, with the working assumption that a face carries a person and that another human being will be able to find them in it. That is a very high claim about appearance, and it is tested in the hardest possible conditions.
What follows is her own account, lightly edited, in her words.
She answered six of the questions we sent and left two aside. What came back is not a technical briefing. It is closer to a report from the edge of the subject, including the part where the institution she worked for turned out to have its own opinions about a woman with expertise.
When you started a reconstruction, how much of the finished face was the skull deciding and how much was you deciding?
This may sound like a cop-out, but I’ll have to say 50-50. The skull gives us the overall head shape, proportion, and the placement of features. That’s actually a lot, but we don’t know the details, and that’s where all the second-guessing comes in. For me anyway.
For instance, I can tell that a person had close-set eyes because the orbits are widely spaced, but I don’t know the shape of the eyelids and how they fold. Something like that can radically change the way a person looks. I don’t want to pick on any one celebrity, but look at someone who had distinctive eyes, like hooded eyes, but after plastic surgery when that skin is removed, they can look like a completely different person.
Lips are another thing that involves some guesswork. We have guidelines we follow, but there is nothing specific enough to go on to be sure whether the person has thick lips, or if they are very thin. We just do our best to not draw attention away from the overall look and proportion of the person’s face.
Tissue depth charts are averages, and no real person is an average. Tell me about a skull where the averages sent you the wrong way.
Usually it’s the weight of the person that we have the most difficulty with, because these are skeletal remains. Even if clothing was found near the victim, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it belonged to them, or that they fit especially well. Finding an extra-large shirt near the remains doesn’t necessarily mean the person was overweight, they could just be wearing a baggy t-shirt.
In facial approximation, we always have to err on the side of caution, and that usually means going with average weight.
Some of your reconstructions were recognised by someone who had known that person. What was it in the face that they recognised?
I have never heard directly from a family member, and I wouldn’t think that many forensic artists do. We’re pretty removed from that part of the process.
I do know that for my first identification, I was told by the investigating officer that the sculpture was shown on the news along with information about the body. I think it was a congenital back condition. Based on that physical information and the sculpture, a family member called the police and submitted DNA. I imagine it was a combination of both.
Working with the dead must change how you look at the living. What do you notice about a stranger’s face in a queue that other people walk past?
If I have any time to study a person (without freaking them out!), I’ll notice the asymmetry. Maybe one eye is slightly higher than the other, or one side of their face is a bit more recessed. The asymmetry starts on the skull, and that really interests me, to think about what a person’s skull might look like.
I actually have a 3D print of my own skull, so I wasn’t being paranoid thinking one of my eyes is higher than the other; the evidence is right there on my skull.
You worked in an institution that had opinions about how a woman in that job should look and behave. What did that teach you about appearance as a form of authority, rather than as decoration?
The subject of looks was never part of the way I was treated in the FBI. I started at the bureau when I was 40, so while that’s not exactly over the hill, it probably would have been different if I had been in my 20s. I dealt with my share of harassment and completely inappropriate behavior when I was in the Navy.
For me, the harassment at the FBI was because I was a woman who was a subject matter expert in the field, and in the words of one particularly misogynistic supervisor, had “very strong opinions.” Which was not a good thing in his eyes. I was harassed and bullied mercilessly, to the point that I had to file an EEO complaint. I won my case, I proved sexual discrimination, but that didn’t stop the treatment. If anything, it got worse, because now I had retaliation to deal with, too.
In my experience, young women in the workplace are targeted for their looks, and older women are targeted for their intellect, wisdom, and confidence in their abilities.
You spend your working life studying faces. How do you feel about being looked at yourself, and about your own face in a photograph?
Any interview or video you see of me prior to 2019 was done at the direction of the FBI, so it was never my choice at all. I absolutely hate being photographed or filmed.
It’s why I don’t have my face all over my Instagram, even though it’s supposed to be better to get more followers. I’d rather keep it educational, answer questions, and teach people about forensic art. They don’t need to see my face to do that.
Three things worth taking from this conversation.
First, that half of a face is architecture you were handed and never chose, which is worth remembering the next time someone is graded on it. Second, that asymmetry is not a flaw in the surface but the structure showing through, and the person who studies faces for a living finds it the most interesting thing in the room. And third, that appearance is not only what gets looked at. It is also what gets used against you, and the thing people are punished for changes as they get older, from the face to the mind. That is a sentence worth reading twice.
Lisa Bailey is a former FBI forensic artist and the author of Clay and Bones, a memoir of her career at the bureau. She teaches forensic art and answers questions about the craft at instagram.com/clayandbones, and her work and book are at lisabaileyofficial.com