Face Value is an attempt to extend the notion of documentary photography to include mechanical perception. Biometrics, surveillance facial recognition, machine learning and algorithms are ubiquitous today. We move in them, they process, record, interpret, judge, represent or alter reality. Documenting and perceiving the world is no longer limited to humans, but increasingly to computers. Phenomena such as computer vision or machine learning are becoming increasingly powerful tools for documenting and processing people, their behavior and their environment. Image and face recognition is increasingly being used in public spaces, at train stations, at demonstrations for the identification of suspected criminals, as well as for identification in general. Methods for face recognition, such as the Viola Jones algorithm, determine features and values from images and associate them with the objects they contain. The so-called "Saliency Heat Map" is a way to visualize the mechanical processing of the image and to present it in a graphical form. It shows saliency and visualizes relevant fragments evaluated by the algorithm.

By combining these saliency maps with various documentary images that have already been algorithmically processed, a trivial and casual reality is created. This reality is disturbed and expanded by the occasional appearance of this component. An attempt was made to influence the algorithm and to acquire and use its aesthetics by manipulating and alienating the original images. If humans are no longer the only ones capable of perceiving, documenting, and judging their environment, what does this mean for the photographic, social, and political present?