It was a natural choice to use a statement like: "You have a beautiful face." I wanted to see people smile, you're not going to get a smile from telling someone they smell bad, or that they look strange. Frankly, I composed my thirty-fourth variable piece in Bradford, Massachusetts in November of 1970 because that was when and where the idea for the piece came to me. I decided 40 pictures would give me a nice sampling of people from the area. It may at first appear that the bulk of the photographs are of women, but look closer, there just happen to be several pictures of very pretty men in this group of photographs. I chose to use a black-and-white camera for this piece because it allowed me to let the photographs focus on people's expressions rather than on the tone of their -----------------. By adjusting the contrast of the images, I was able to draw out more emphasis on their expressions. From there I chose the size of the photographs to display according to the original gallery space I had available. Could you describe the gallery space? How big did you make the photos? How did you frame them?....

It was paramount to display the 40 images with the statement "You have a beautiful face," either alone would have left the piece feeling incomplete.

-Douglas Huebler