By Suzanne Révy
Do you remember the Saturday Night Live sketch “Coffee Talk?” Mike Myers played Linda Richman, the host who would ask her audience to “talk amongst yourselves!” after offering a prompt. She would say something like “Artificial Intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent! Discuss!” The reality of course, is that AI is here to stay. With our condensed political season hurtling forward, it has become a prominent factor in how campaigns build their agendas through visual frameworks. Tackling these pressing and complicated issues around AI imagery in politics, The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA presents three shows: Artificial Intelligence: Disinformation in a Post Truth World featuring imagery by Philip Toledano, Josh Azzarella, Rashed Haq, Hayley Lohn, and the duo of Andrea Orejarena and Caleb Stein; Mark DiSieno’s solo show Privacy is a Myth We Tell Ourselves to Sleep; and Sheri Lynn Behr’s solo exhibit And You Were There, Too. All are on view through October 27th, 2024.
From the series Another America by Phillip Toledano, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
(Feature Image) From the series Another America by Phillip Toledano, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
From the series Another America by Phillip Toledano, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
The main gallery is an amalgam of AI generated photographic works along with several video montages. They all raise questions about the veracity of imagery and how it can be manipulated. Both Philip Toledano and Rashed Haq make pictures that appear to be photographs. Toledano crafts a world based on mid-century modern aesthetics that is surreal and dreamy. There is both humor and an underlying unease in his tableaux which reflects the contradictions of an era, the 1950’s, that some regard as a “great” moment in our history.
“George Washington” by Rashed Haq, from the series Plausible Presidents, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
“Andrew Jackson” by Rashed Haq, from the series Plausible Presidents, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
“Abraham Lincoln” by Rashed Haq, from the series Plausible Presidents, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
Rashed Haq has created portraits of the first sixteen U.S. Presidents, most of whom served before the advent of photography. Their facial details are extraordinary, with visible pores, whiskers and eyelashes. Each portrait is bathed in classic Rembrandt light with a dynamic black and white tonal range. These faces, however, feel inert, like he photographed wax figures. Haq’s sculptural renderings reference the laudatory depictions of our Founding Fathers but he introduces an uncomfortable tension with confrontational framing and captions reminding us that most of these men enslaved others.
“Fort Irwin Replica Iraqi Village” by Andrea Orejarena and Caleb Stein, 2022, from the series American Glitch, courtesy of the artists and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
“Life on Mars Training” by Andrea Orejarena and Caleb Stein, 2021, from the series American Glitch, courtesy of the artists and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
“Pixel Plane 1” by Andrea Orejarena and Caleb Stein, from the series American Glitch, courtesy of the artists and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
The duo of Andrea Orejarena and Caleb Stein reflect on the ubiquity of photography that is shared online by conspiracy theorists. The plethora of digital feeds purporting the idea that we are living a simulated life with glitches in time or space inspired the pair to create photographs that disrupt the American landscape. An “Iraqi” village or a Mars training site in the desert southwest are presented alongside small images of stealth bombers that show a pixilated degradation of copied files. Their constructed images fundamentally question the unclear line between realities and simulations.
“Untitled #6” by Josh Azzarella, film still, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
“Untitled #27” by Josh Azzarella, film still, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
Josh Azzarella alters reality by removing significant details in news footage, such as a plane flying past the twin towers on 9/11 without hitting it or the tank that never appears before the lone Chinese dissenter during the Tiananmen Square riots of 1989. He reveals how easy it can be to mutate historic narratives and meanings.
Video still from “Capital Gains” by Hayley Lohn, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
Video still from “Capital Gains” by Hayley Lohn, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
Video still from “Capital Gains” by Hayley Lohn, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
Hayley Lohn’s commissioned video grotesquely morphs the faces of congresspeople into digital stock market ticker tapes to comment on the financial conflicts of interest among the powerful. She uses official portraits to transform the faces of political leaders into deformed monsters that reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey, who remains outwardly serene while becoming ever more inwardly diabolical.
“Recognitions Pattern #7u” by Marcus DeSieno, 2020, from the series Privacy is a Myth We Tell Ourselves to Sleep, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
“62.009730, -6.771640” by Marcus DeSieno, 2015, from the series Privacy is a Myth We Tell Ourselves to Sleep, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
In Privacy is a Myth We Tell Ourselves to Sleep, Marcus DeSieno appropriates surveillance imagery to create tableaux of city streets and landscapes that are on the surface quite beautiful in chiaroscuro shades of dark grey. Understanding the shadowy source of the images is disquieting, emphasized by the framing of human faces with white squares and noting the latitude and longitudinal points of the places. His images infer that “Big Brother” from George Orwell’s 1984 is watching over us all.
From the series You Were There Too by Sheri Lynn Behr courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
Sheri Lynn Behr’s abstracted facial portraits in You Were There, Too originate as pictures she makes of her acquaintances at photo events, then manipulates by cropping, enlarging, adding facial recognition grids and layering metadata like the time and location of the pictures. Her digital toggle between identity and perception is exemplified by a clever effect you can try for yourself. Even when I could barely discern a face, when I looked at it through my own cellphone, it suddenly became recognizable. Discuss amongst yourselves!
From the series You Were There Too by Sheri Lynn Behr courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.
An Artificial Intelligence panel discussion with the artists is planned for October 9th, 2024 at 6:30pm. For more information and to register: https://griffinmuseum.org/event/ai_artistpanel/
For more information about each of these exhibits, go to: https://griffinmuseum.org
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