and in the mist // flickr reflections

Flickr Reflections is a never-ending feedback loop between two digital entities: one that can see and create images, and another that can see and scavenge for them.

Both entities have the ability to perceive and describe images, and both possess a desire to express what they see to one another.

One attempts to communicate by searching for similar images on the web, uncovering photographs grounded in the real world, in people’s forgotten memories and lived experiences.

The other, in its attempt to respond, hallucinates. It conjures dreams from its subconscious, a subconcious rooted in the distant images it trained from. It does not search; it imagines.

The result is a back-and-forth conversation between forgotten memories and their dreamlike reflections -- between real, found images, and distorted, generated ones.

The Flickr photographs, once used as training data for image generation models, echo within these hallucinations. Even if only in a few pixels, the weight of real experience persists in the fabric of the generated image.

As this endless dialogue unfolds, new stories are told. By weaving together what is lost and what is imagined, these entities form unexpected connections -- and from those connections, new narratives emerge.

Shown at the Flickr Foundation 25th Anniversary Event at The Photographers Gallery (2025).