In the month of April 1972, Jim Melchert photographed 162 artists in preparation for a slide projection work titled Faces. He documented only half of their faces so they could be merged together when projected to create the image of a whole face. This work was exhibited at the Reese Palley Gallery in San Francisco, California, once considered a barometer for the most vital work to be seen in the Bay Area. Later, the piece was presented at SFMOMA, and curator Suzanne Foley described Faces in a museum catalog the same year; “Faces began as a piece about chance, on the slot machine premise that you never know what two images will occur together. Two carousel projectors set at the same automatic advance speed soon go out of synchronization due to the irregularities of each timing mechanism. Melchert made slides of the faces of 100s of artists whom he happened to come in contact with during the month of April. The piece is comprised of a sequence of 162 slides with two projectors, each projecting half of the image large enough to reach from floor to ceiling. The slides are split vertically and projected together. The combinations that occur from this out-of-sync automatic projection establish relationships of amazing psychological and philosophical import. The over-life-size projection gives a heroic dimension to the community of friends and colleagues.”