As a pioneering digital artist Nancy Burson first created her computer-generated composite portraits in the early 1980s. These works, as with First and Second Beauty Composites, were created in collaboration with scientists and researchers at MIT to fully embrace the technology that was available at this very early time in digital image-making.

The Beauty Composites digitally blends features of prominent 1950s actresses Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelley, Sophia Loren, and Marilyn Monroe in the First Composite and contemporary actresses of the 1980s, Jane Fonda, Jacqueline Bisset, Diane Keaton, Brooke Shields, and Meryl Streep in the Second Composite. The resulting diptych challenges not only the boundaries of what was technologically possible at the time, but also provides commentary on traditional notions of beauty that remain relevant today.