Kate. She looks familiar but somehow different. Thirty-something, probably Pakeha. The sort of face you pass on the street every day.
Kate is, literally, the face of New Zealand today. She was compiled by a team of Weekend Herald photographers and artists, using information from the 2001 Census. We photographed 100
people in the streets of Auckland, Hamilton and Rotorua, based on the census breakdown of our collective age, race and gender. Pushing the Mac computer to the limit, our artists melded the pictures into a single image - Kate was the result.
She is 35 years old (the average age of New Zealanders today, up from 31 in 1991). She is only marginally female, as there are 95 men for every 100 women. And her looks reflect the ethnic make-up of this country - 71 per cent Pakeha, 15 per cent Maori, 7 per cent Pacific Island and 7 per cent Asian.
Because about a quarter of our initial subjects were wearing glasses, Kate appears to be faintly bespectacled. Her hairstyle is mannish, reflecting that there are almost as many men in New Zealand as women.
She looks older and less obviously Pakeha than she would have done 10 years ago. In another 10 or 20 years, she will look older still as our population ages. If immigration trends of the last decade continue, she may also look more Asian, especially if she lives in Auckland.
Why Kate? No scientific reason but it is one of the most consistently popular girls' names in Herald birth notices over the last 10 years.
Many faces of a nation
