The intricately constructed portraits of Michael Mapes – in pictures

Hair colour, eye colour and fingerprints make up what Michael Mapes describes as the “biographical DNA” used in creating each of his reinterpretations of the Dutch Masters' portraits Photograph: Michael Mapes

“I think about constructing the work in a painterly sense,” says Mapes. “Each specimen is like a paintbrush stroke” Photograph: Michael Mapes

“I wanted the work to be immediately recognisable as a person and a painting,” explains Mapes. “The subjects are all aristocrats and, as such, there's much that can be known about them as 17th-century humans” Photograph: Michael Mapes

In reconstructing each portrait, hundreds of different prints and photographs of the source material are reused and resized Photograph: Michael Mapes

Among the portraits that Mapes chose to deconstruct is this 1639 painting of Maria Trip by Rembrandt. “I chose the Dutch Masters' paintings because, to me, they represented the most iconic form of portraiture,” says Mapes Photograph: Michael Mapes