Installation of "Characters", a series of CGI photographs based on AI portraits from artist Dagmar Keller
Characters, installation view
from the series "Characters", by artist Dagmar Keller. CGI photographs on baryta paper based on AI portraits
from the series Characters, #74
from the series "Characters", by artist Dagmar Keller. CGI photographs on baryta paper based on AI portraits
from the series Characters, #698
from the series "Characters", by artist Dagmar Keller. CGI photographs on baryta paper based on AI portraits
from the series Characters, #74.2
from the series "Characters", by artist Dagmar Keller. CGI photographs on baryta paper based on AI portraits
Characters, #698.2, installation view

Dagmar Keller
Characters
3D Renderings on baryta paper webs (2m x 1,27m), 2021

Following my series „dear to me“, in which I explored how digital technology shifts the boundaries between public and private space, I was searching for a way to create a kind of portrait using the data traces we all leave behind on the internet every day.

During my research, I came across entirely AI-generated „portraits.“
The AI network had been trained on a vast dataset of photographic headshots—essentially, using our own data traces—and was now generating strikingly realistic simulations of photographic portraits. I wondered how I could photograph these non-existent people myself.

This led me to create 3D avatars based on the AI-generated portraits. I was able to stage and photograph these avatars in the virtual space according to my own vision. Finally, I transferred the virtual images onto analog black-and-white film and enlarged them onto large strips of baryta paper in the darkroom.