We Are At War

“The very existence of AI has rendered both history and facts infinitely elastic. Simultaneously, everything is true, and nothing is true. We are at a cultural turning point -our relationship with the image, and the idea of image as truth -has fundamentally changed. What better way to illustrate this than by convincingly reinventing one of the most significant moments of our own near history ? June 6th, 1944. D day.
Amongst the thousands of soldiers landing that day were photographers. To name a few: The Army Film and Photographic Unit, covering the landings at sword, Juno and gold beaches. Richard Taylor, a sergeant in the US signal corps who filmed the assault. And at Omaha beach, the photographer Robert Capa. Capa shot approximately 4 rolls of film, and sent them to London to be developed, but due to a lab mishap, only 11 images survived. Capa created an empty pocket of history-a pocket that can be filled with ai – what images might have been on those lost rolls of film ?
‘We are at war’ is part of my continued exploration of historical surrealism – working with ai, I imagine one of capa’s lost roll of 36 images – and in doing so, demonstrate how utterly convincing invented history can be. If we can rewrite the past, imagine what we can do with the present.” – Phillip Toledano