Ghost story

With a click and a flash; the image has come alive.

And then we wait for reality to birth in front of our eyes. The chemical fluid contracts, snaps, and lights up. Grains appear, each either darker or lighter than the other. We see the exposure materialize for our eyes; our faces looking back at us. In our hands, we hold loving families, our first steps, tragic news stories, blood and guts, and death and destruction. All of them fleeting memories are forming a reality that is long dead, yet somehow alive in front of us.

I tried to grab the uncanny reality of every photograph by digitally enhancing its material properties. I use the black and white values of film grain to translate them in height information for a 3D brush which I used to add the third dimension to individual photos taken from random archives. In ‘Gore’ I add the ‘next’ technological step in this project, by using AI technology to generate 3D models based on portraits.

The results are ghosts from pasts sitting quietly in every family album, newspaper or on every office desk.