Funhouse Mirror: The Controversial AI-Photography by Charlie Engman

Charlie Engman is a New York-based artist, educator, and the art director of the sustainable fashion brand Collina Strada.

He holds a degree in Japanese and Korean Studies from the University of Oxford. He is a recognized leader in the world of AI-generated art, and has created work in various media for clients including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue Magazine, Dazed, Prada, Gucci, Marni, Acne, Hermes, Vivienne Westwood, and Stella McCartney. He is the author of the books MOM (Edition Patrick Frey, 2020), I Care a Lotta, I Wear Collina Strada (Rizzoli, 2023), and Hello Chaos, a Love Story (SPBH and Mack Books, 2024)

“Some questions that are always at the forefront of my art practice: how do my images relate to the images that precede and surround them; what expectations are we bringing to images, and how are these expectations established and reinforced; what purpose do these expectations serve and how can we interact with these expectations?
AI image generators are a fascinating new tool for exploring these questions because they create images based upon a dataset of hundreds of millions of preexisting imagery but are otherwise unfettered by the preexisting expectations of visual culture. They make new images based on predictions from all the images (and image tags) that precede them. However, they are not otherwise bound by human logic or cultural codes and, therefore, make images that reflect these codes in surprising and often challenging ways, like a funhouse mirror. There is a beautiful collapse of category distinctions and a dynamic interplay between un-indoctrinated naivety and an appreciation of precedent”. – Charlie Engman

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