Watch as Van Gogh’s Famous Self-Portrait Morphs Into a Photograph

It’s a real­i­ty of big city liv­ing that one occa­sion­al­ly stum­bles upon some famous per­son behav­ing like a mere civil­ian, out walk­ing the dog, buy­ing a lat­te, or tak­ing the kids to some child-cen­tric event. I’m bad at rec­og­niz­ing these lumi­nar­ies out of con­text, which may be why I’m great at mis­tak­en­ly believ­ing some ran­dom cit­i­zen stand­ing beside me at an inter­sec­tion is in fact a not­ed author or beloved char­ac­ter actor. I have thus far nev­er labored under the delu­sion that the guy across the aisle on the F train to Brook­lyn is a one-eared Dutch post-Impres­sion­ist who died over a hun­dred years ago, but that could change.

Or not. Accord­ing to Lithuan­ian archi­tect and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tadao Cern, the friend who served as the mod­el for his dig­i­tal recre­ation of Vin­cent Van Gogh’s icon­ic self-por­trait does­n’t resem­ble the painter all that much beyond his gin­ger hair and beard. After tak­ing his pic­ture, Cern devot­ed a day to adjust­ing col­ors and expo­sure in Light­room and fine tun­ing a host of details in Pho­to­shop. Sud­den­ly, the sim­i­lar­i­ties were uncan­ny.

And since every Franken­stein needs a bride, Cern has cob­bled togeth­er a Mona Lisa to keep Van Gogh com­pa­ny.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mor­ph­ing Van Gogh Por­traits

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Begin­ning of Mod­ern Art

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is post­ing from the wilds of Cape Cod, where she once spot­ted John Waters rid­ing his bicy­cle to Safe­way in a yel­low slick­er and match­ing all-weath­er pants. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday