WEST HAVEN, CONNECTICUT.- The director of the Henry Lee Institute of Forensic Science says a photograph found in the early 1990s is an original photo of Vincent van Gogh. The photograph was found in the early 1990s at an antique dealer and it bears a striking resemblance to van Gogh’s collection of self-portraits, said Albert Harper, the forensic scientist. The forehead, the shape and size of the eyes, even individual hairs matched up, making the forensic scientist sure it is an original photograph of famous Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. Harper and his colleagues are convinced, but the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam has rejected the conclusion. To demonstrate this conclusion, a system of overlaying the images for comparison is on display at a new exhibition titled "Discovering Vincent van Gogh: A Forensic Study in Identification" at the Seton Gallery at the University of New Haven through March 4.

The photo dates to 1886 and it shows an older man wearing a plain suit and small bow tie. He has light eyes, a beard, a thin long nose and his hair is combed back. "I saw it and thought it was van Gogh right away, and the more I looked at it, the more I was sure," said artist Tom Stanford, who discovered the photograph while looking through an album of cabinet card photographs (mostly of clergymen dating back to the late 19th century) at an antique dealer’s shop in Massachusetts. He bought the photograph for $1 and then immediately brought it to photo historian Joseph Buberger, who has previously worked with photographs of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Buberger started researching the artist and found that van Gogh’s collection of more than 40 self-portraits bore a close resemblance to the photograph. By overlaying the images on a computer, the researchers were able to see exactly where the two differed and where they matched. The system was developed by Allen Phillips, manager of Collection Imaging at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.

Buberger said he believes it is entirely possible that van Gogh drew and painted his self-portraits based on the photograph. Also, after searching through databases, Buberger matched the photographer’s name, "Victor Morin," which is printed on the front of the photograph, with an old studio in Brussels, where van Gogh spent much of his time.