The New Dutch Passport Photo Model Matrix
My head now illegal?

We started our preparations for The Big Round, counter-clockwise round Lake Victoria, along all coasts, starting early August. For Tanzania, I will need a new passport, since at the border, immigration officers should not read this and understand I was once thrown out of Tanzania: (For the background story click here.

The reason is not that Tanzanian immigration officers will not let me in. There is little chance they will find and understand the stamps (their reading capacity seldom exceeds that of 1st class primary school). But if one of them does, he will ask a private extra charge. So, for reasons of budget control, I 'd better have a new passport. As a Dutchman, I set myself to study the Dutch regulations for application for a new passport, in particular: The Dutch Photomatrix Model 2006 (Toelichting pasfoto-eisen.pdf). One reads

Width of the face is: from lower side start of left ear to lower side start of right ear min 16 mm and max 20 mm
Length of face is: people older than 11 years from chin to top min 26 mm and max 30 mm

Biometric digital filing of pictures of all Dutch passport holders, such that everyone from whom a picture has been filed can be identified, even those not ready or willing to show their passport, identity card or otherwise identify themselves, is a development of major political interest. No doubt, schoolchildren in 2100 will have to memorize the date of its introduction in their history lessons. Governments, though, are unlikely to start celebrating it as the British celebrated the bicentennial of the abolition of slavery. I am insufficiently in touch with Dutch political events to know whether this issue has been a publicly discussed election item before being introduced, or voters were too busy with tomorrow's forgotten issues: global warming, smoking, pedophilia, terrorism and the like. I do know that in Britain it has raised protests which was easily suppressed by reference to bombings etc.

According to The Dutch Photomatrix Model 2006, the size of your head is free: if you have a big head, simply sit away from the camera a bit more. The problem is in the width-length requirements. They set limits to your head's shape, to be precise: to the aspect ratio (ratio of width and length) of your head.

Above: your four head's extremes (top-chin-left-right, ears out) should be
within the range of grey aspect ratios according to The Dutch Photomatrix Model 2006
(Toelichting pasfoto-eisen.pdf)

During a first pilot study of my passport renewal project (PRP 2007), I started to fear the worst. In the picture below my head is sized according to the red frame. It is sized, as required, to make the ears stick out of the frame. Is the red part of my head showing illegal oversize?

Naturally, I started to fear that Dutch civil authorities, like everywhere else, are endowed with an instinctive reluctance to accept outrageous brain storage capacity, But after serious geometrical research and engineering, assisted by an expert of the Netherlands Embassy in Uganda, I narrowly escaped: we just managed a legal framing of my head by taking a frame width according to the red (minimal) lines, and a frame height according to the green (maximal) lines. My head is legal after all, although I am an absolute borderline case. What, if not suspicious brain storage capacity, could be behind this Dutch legal restriction on permissible heads? I decided to study a photo of Osama bin Laden.

.

No Dutch passport!

(but play Osama bin Laden.wav; for context: click here)