All the presidents of the United States from 1789 to 1889.

The aesthetics of official portraits of world leaders are no accident. As Alejandro Almaraz demonstrates in his series, “Portraits of Power,” they’re precisely constructed compositions, created with the intention of reinforcing the authority of their subjects.

Almaraz created the images in his series by overlapping between four and 40 photos (and sometimes paintings) of successive heads of state, procured over “many, many hours at the library.” It’s a technique he’s used previously in his series, “Places I've Never Been Present,” in which he layered photographs of churches, mausoleums, and other buildings associated with power.

All the British prime ministers elected under Queen Elizabeth II (1952–2008).

All the prime ministers of Japan during the Showa period (1926–1947).

Almaraz found that, in both architecture and photography, power within a country is communicated in a constant visual language. A flurry of medals and other military regalia, for instance, characterize the appearance of a generation of Japanese prime ministers. In recent American portraits, the flag figures prominently.

The differences between faces, meanwhile, fade away in the aggregate, leaving a standardized, identityless visage. And while the images do say something about the fixedness of a country’s representation of power (the faces, with only a few exceptions, don’t vary drastically) it’s also possible to view them as evidence of the fleetingness of power. In Almaraz’s methodology, leaders who’d ruled for many decades, won wars, and conquered territories disappear into the blur just as seamlessly as those who ruled only for a short time.