When Instagram travel and lifestyle influencer Julia Reiser saw an image of herself that had been exposed to a “beautifying” algorithm, she barely recognized her likeness.
“I looked like a mannequin,” she said. “My breasts were super, super big, my face was not there anymore.”
Filters and apps such as Facetune let anyone digitally alter their appearance, and this particular algorithm had narrowed Reiser’s forehead, made her lips fuller and reduced the width of her arms. It also slimmed her ribcage, a tweak that made her newly enlarged breasts look even more prominent.
“I showed the picture to my friends and they were like, ‘We wouldn’t have recognized you not knowing it was you. We recognized your dog, but not you anymore,’” Reiser said Tuesday in an interview from Los Angeles International Airport, where she was about to board a plane home to Germany after attending Burning Man over the Labor Day weekend.
The image forms the basis for one of artist Gretchen Andrew’s “Facetune portraits,” which went on display Wednesday at Berlin Art Week and will remain on view there through Sept. 15. Andrew’s work often explores technology’s impact on society, and she’s been on a quest to highlight the chasm between how women really look and the physical “perfection” they strive for because pervasive cultural beauty ideals have shaped their view of how they should look.
Image-altering apps such as Facetune, Bodytune and YouCam Makeup “profess to make us more beautiful, or at least more acceptable,” Andrew said in an artist’s statement. “They also make us the same, collapsing human diversity and eliminating the concept of capturing a ‘likeness.’” The U.S. born, London-based artist has sought to demonstrate this homogenization before, giving Mona Lisa an AI makeover, for example, that turned her from enigmatic to “basic bitch.”
For her new series, Andrew took formal photographic portraits of five Berlin-based influencers, then printed them with a special printer at Matr Labs in New York that can turn photos into wet oil paintings.
Next, the artist turned those paintings over to a robot she built that’s driven by algorithms widely used to alter faces and bodies. Holding paint brushes of various sizes above the canvases, the bot physically brushed, nicked and smudged the paint to indicate the algorithm’s suggested maximum tweaks, creating new versions of the portraits that essentially blurred and scarred the originals. (If it all sounds a bit complicated, the video below featuring DJ Miriam Abiba Anani demonstrates the process.)
The artist is fascinated with the history of portraiture and equally interested in exploring the complexity of contemporary portraits in our digital-facing world.
“The medium of paint really allows us to have a very grounded connection to that conversation,” she said of her portraits, which blend traditional and modern portrait-making tools. “And from a material standpoint, it allows these modifications to happen in paint instead of pixels.”
Andrew, a former Google employee who worked on the team that built the company’s human resources software, chose influencers as her subjects because they’re all too familiar with the pressure to present a certain image on social media, especially since user engagement directly impacts their livelihood.
“Even the musicians, for example, know that if they post photos with their bodies that they get more views, and that brings people to their music,” the artist said. “They’re aware that they’re playing this game and they’re not always sure that they’re winning.”
Reiser, who posts photos and videos capturing her world travels, knows that game well.
“There’s a lot of competition and a lot of ‘Who has the best reels? Who’s looking the best?’” she said. “Honestly, I took a break for like two months. I stayed away because social media is connected to mental health.”
Freelance journalist Annika Prigger, another of Andrew’s portrait subjects, doesn’t consider herself an influencer in the traditional sense as her posts don’t generate income. But although she shares her visual art and political activism with her 19,000 Instagram followers “more like a hobby,” she’s still well aware of the stresses experienced by those who seek followers and engagement online.
“Beauty is rewarded with reach and that is a problem in my eyes,” the 29-year-old said in an interview.
On the ground in Berlin, Andrew photographed her subjects in the outfits and accouterments of their choosing, and these remained untouched by the arms of the algorithm-driven robot. Prigger’s colorful plaid vest and pants stay plainly visible as she leans back in her car’s driver’s seat, for example. So does the hardwood floor in Reiser’s Berlin apartment and a favorite necklace she wore for the shoot. It’s just her distinct physical features that become hard to make out.
Said Reiser, “It’s a weird feeling when your personality just fades.”
