DOUBLE TAKES

Double Takes consists of twenty diptychs whose broad common genre is street photography. On the left side is a “real” photograph that I took, while the right side shows a synthetic image obtained by extracting a description of the former - a so-called “reverse prompt” - using Claude, an LLM (Large Language Model), and then feeding that prompt into an image-generator (Google’s Nano Banana Pro). 
Crucially, this prompting technique is purely verbal and non-pictorial, the object of the exercise being to generate an approximation of the “master” image (the original photo) without recourse to any visual suggestion. I requested that the reverse prompts – the description extracted by the LLM – be presented in JSON code, a lightweight, text-based format for representing structured data as name/value pairs and arrays. 
The object here is not to achieve the maximum possible coincidence between the two images but to weave a web of repetition and difference with the generation of a synthetic image that teases plausibility and verisimilitude and creates a feeling of uncertainty and uncanniness.
The relationship between words and pictures is both complex and paradoxical : if a picture is worth a thousand words, it is no less true that a word is worth a thousand pictures.

Ut pictura poesis: An experiment in verbal iconogenesis (pdf)

Giclée prints on Hahnemühle archival paper. Varying sizes. Edition of 10 per work. For custom sizes and supports or questions about this series, please contact me.