Fingerprints
The fingerprint, too, was a graphic device awaiting Steinberg’s reinvention. He turned his own thumb- and fingerprints into what Harold Rosenberg called “organic signatures.” Having observed that a fingerprint has the oval shape of a human face, he produced fingerprint portraits which, though they lack physiognomic features, become the essence of identity.
When affixed to a faux passport, replete with counterfeit seals and stamps, the concoction “takes over the function of government.”22 When applied to a group portrait, fingerprints may offer an ironic comment on individuality or corporate conformity. Finally, they become yet another graphic means of rendering anything, whether clouds in the sky or birds stepping daintily on a graph-paper grid.
