On Photography – 2024
"On Photography" is a memorial to my very first camera and a reflection on my personal exploration of photography as a medium, particularly its relationship to how we see and remember. Our memories are in flux, constantly being rewritten, so photographs become tangible documents we can return to—acting almost as surrogates for memory.
To delve into the conflict between the static nature of photographs and the fluidity of memory, I used artificial intelligence to create five models, each based on a specific experience and memory captured with my camera. I collected and curated the photos from these moments and trained a generative adversarial network (GAN) on each dataset.
A GAN is a type of AI model where two networks—a generator and a discriminator—work together. The generator creates new images based on the training data, while the discriminator evaluates them. This process allows for the creation of increasingly realistic and nuanced images.
Each model enables me to revisit these memories repeatedly, discovering new aspects and fragments through AI-generated visual distortions, mixing, and overlapping. Intrigued by the soft, poetic materiality of the outputs, I animated them through interpolation and connected them with sound to enhance the sensory experience.
By transforming these static images into dynamic, evolving pieces, I aim to mirror the ever-changing nature of memory itself. This project not only honors my first camera but also challenges traditional perceptions of photographs as fixed representations of reality.
