WHo is afraid of artificial intelligence? We are probably all a little – but the artists of the center of the Photo Brussels Festival this year adopted the technology to bring us an intriguing and sometimes optimistic exploration of one of the most about our time.
The ambitious conservation of the Academic of Photography Michel Poivert brings together 17 projects at the Hangar Gallery in Brussels. Together, their creations reveal the visual and intellectual potential, as well as the current limits, of this wave of “promptography”.
Cherry Airlines
Pascal Sgro invites us to enter an imaginary world aboard his fictitious airlines, making a disturbing journey in the 1950s. Each image, created using AI, blurs the boundaries between reality and invention And suggests brilliant advertisements for a golden age of air trip. Sgro invites reflection on progress and aspiration, and the paradox of the environmental cost of lifestyle.
Serving a fantastic lunch and a comfortable nap in the plush hut, it tells the story of the pursuit of luxury that fueled the climate crisis.
One in history Parallel
In their series a parallel history, the artists Brodbeck and de Barbuat have deepened the image databases of MediaAn AI program that creates images from text descriptions. Using the literal language prompts of the software, they wanted to see how they could recreate some of the most famous photographs in the world. The work was done between 2022 and 2023 and really highlighted the defects and prejudices in the source data, questioning the role of the Internet in appropriation and stereotypes.
For example, facial characteristics take a generic form with only a suspicion of ethnicity – at the time, there were inadequate source images of ethnic minority. In the recreation generated by the Ai-Ai of the emblematic portrait of onnie Leibovitz of John Lennon and Yoko OnoThe data results have shown Lennon dressed several times, despite the invitation that it should be naked. This is not the case with Ono – the AI process continued to reversing demand, assuming it is more usual for women to be naked.
The subject of Dorothea Lange Migrant seems to have done a cosmetic job, the result of the advertising bias of Midjourney. Each of these images presents a feeling of confusion between what we recognize and defects in detail – hands for example.
Bárbaras
Honoring little -known women who played an important role in the training of Brazil that we know today was the mission of the artist Claudia Jaguaribe. We know it so little about its main subject, Bárbara de Alencar, whose name develops on the signaling panels and the occasional building, which Jaguaribe has plunged into historical, iconographic and photographic research on AI to visualize his history. During her research, she discovered that from Alencar – a businesswoman, an educator and a revolutionary – was in fact one of her ancestors.
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From the Bárbaras series, 2024, a portrait of ia of Espercanca Garcia, who was an Afro-Brazilian enslave, born in 1751, and is considered the first lawyer in Brazil
Jaguaribe used AI to create an enlightened series of portraits of other unknown women of importance, entitled Bárbaras, which she represented by collage like stamps and postcards.
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Another of the series is aqualtune, an Ai portrait of a warrior princess of what was known in his time under the name of Kongo who, during his enslavement in Brazil, was marked on his chest with a design of flowers manufactured by A hot iron. She fought for her freedom and that of others in the middle of the 12th century
Silent hero
The use of AI to fill the gaps in historical references also feeds Alexey Yurenev’s project to answer questions on the role that his Russian grandfather played in the Red Army during the Second World War. His grandfather, he knew it, was considered a war hero, but as he was no longer alive, Yurenev could not question him what had, exactly, he had played.
Yurenev proposed a method to use image data sources to create amalgations generated by the machine of people, places and events which he then presented to survivor veterans.
These impressionist images have exploited a psychological story which refreshed the interpretations of the conflicts of the veterans. Their response was remarkable and prompted fascinating historical testimonies.
New New York
Marry nostalgia with AI technology gives birth to this series created by Robin Lopvet which revisits the history of photography in New York during the 20th century. From reporting to street photography, its computer generated reflections play, often with humor, on color and aesthetics printing techniques that defined an era.
Can the question he seems to be asking: can photography only describe the world? Or can we use imagination and fiction, like cinematographic creations, to explain it?
For those who prefer a more traditional approach and like to take advantage of pure photography, Photo Brussels is not lacking in treasure.
During the participating galleries throughout the city, you can enjoy, for example, on the vintage prints of the Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe. From the Eric Mouchet gallery exhibition is his emblematic series by Roses, which was dedicated to the novelist Yukio Mishima. Born in 1933, Hosoe became international renown as a avant-garde artist in the 1960s and died just a few months ago. His work pays tribute to his love for European Renaissance painting and the art of eroticism.
Timeless Napoli
Nestled in the Stieglitz 19 gallery are fragments of life to Napoli by photographer Anders Petersen. His upset and intensely cropped black and white prints do not try to give meaning to the chaos of the city, but they tell him how he is, overflowing with character and atmosphere. The images have such a classic quality that it is a surprise to see that it has created them as recently as 2022.
Wolf
Unlike the claustrophobia of Naples, you can almost taste the air of the Wilderness European Gallery of the National Gallery to National 8. In a difference in its roots in reporting and an urban life, Frederik Buyckx has adopted a fine approach- Arts of his Wolf project And made an adventure to reconnect with the natural world.
By reaching some of the most difficult environments in Europe, I wanted to see what it is to have to bear the strength of nature, to show your beauty but at the same time the harshness of getting along
Photo Brussels Until February 23, takes place in places in Brussels, in Belgium. Fiona Shields was there at the invitation of the festival organizers.
