People Who Never Were

Challenge

AI imagery can become technically impressive yet emotionally anonymous. This study asks whether fictional subjects can still carry a sense of memory, geography, weather, age, and lived experience without pretending to be documentary evidence.

Approach

Each image begins with a directed idea for character, place, light, lens, texture, and emotional distance. Iterative prompting, selection, and sequencing borrow from portraiture, street photography, cinema, and editorial image-making to create a coherent visual language rather than a collection of isolated outputs.

Outcome

An evolving portrait of people who do not exist, situated in worlds that feel recognisable. The series treats generative technology as an image-making medium under deliberate human authorship, while remaining transparent that every person and moment shown is fictional.