Broken Mirror

Since 2015, I have explored the Korean peninsula through my photography, uncovering social phenomena and the results of economic growth and development, as well as the consequent side effects they have had on the population.

Broken Mirror is an artwork which uses documentary language, where I blended my perception of North Korea with that of artificial intelligence. I used the Midjourney software, to which I explained in detail the result I wanted to obtain, and I repeated this operation hundreds of times per image until I obtained a result similar to the one I had envisioned.

I inserted a foreign element into the scenes of the daily life of North Koreans, in the form of insects which grow bigger and more intrusive until they look as if they can control people. Finally, North Koreans themselves turn into insects, thus bringing the endured domination to completion.

The idea at the root of this project is about my job as a documentary photographer on North Korea together with my fascination for science fiction and dystopian scenes – from black and white photography by the great photographers of the past to physical body modifications which are typical of David Cronenberg’s films. In a sense, I drew from my personal database of images, videos, considerations, influences and fears, perhaps not too differently from what artificial intelligence did when putting together the images I wanted, often adding unexpected elements that were out of my control.

Broken Mirror is, therefore, the result of a compromise between myself and artificial intelligence, where the exceptional nature of North Korean society, strongly influenced by one of the harshest totalitarian regimes in the world – which, in actual fact, isolates the country and its citizens – is represented by adding an alien element, in a sort of Kafkaesque metamorphosis.

On a second level of reading, this external element, in the form of insects, is a metaphor for the invasive and controlling nature of technology and artificial intelligence in society in general. The use of the Midjourney software (currently in version 4) represented my renunciation of complete control over the final result, as this technology often adds unexpected and not always correctable elements.