Neo Renaissance

During the Renaissance, artists shifted from portraying the divine as distant and untouchable to expressing it through the human form. In painting, the pursuit of beauty was never just about appearance—it became a projection of human longing for what is sacred. Perhaps this is why we are drawn to the Mona Lisa: not only for her enigmatic smile, but for the way inner divinity is revealed through a human face.

In today’s world, artificial intelligence has begun to occupy a similar role. On one hand, it is a powerful tool; on the other, it has been mythologized, even worshipped. As AI increasingly replaces artistic labor, I find myself asking: if AI can generate faces that look more and more like real people, what, then, is the work of a photographer? When perfection is defined by smooth skin and digital retouching, what remains of the humanity that only a real person can convey?

This project is my attempt to explore these questions. I began by generating images based on my closest friends and family. At first, this was a playful exercise—when AI was less advanced, I used it to imagine scenes of us together, to dispel loneliness. But as the technology improved, the portraits became colder and more unfamiliar. Even when based on real photographs, the faces carried skin, texture, and detail, but they lacked expression, gesture, and presence.

In response, I turned to a process I call digital bleaching, inspired by darkroom practice. I flatten the contrast and tonal gradients of AI images, reducing them to skeletal outlines, then slowly rebuild them with light and shadow. This is not correction, but interpretation—an act of reintroducing what I believe is human: memory, tenderness, vulnerability.

By keeping the AI framework but reshaping it with my own hand, I seek to reclaim humanity from within the algorithm. Just as Renaissance artists once humanized the divine, I attempt to humanize the artificial—asking, ultimately: when machines can fabricate beauty, what still makes an image truly human?