BUY VIA ETERNO GALLERY

Edition of 50 + 10 AP
Giclée on Velvet 270gr paper
Signed with embossed stamp and numbered
55 x 68,7 cm
2025

This print was produced as part of "Botto: The Art of Collective Minds" at Eterno Gallery, Lisbon.

"This work investigates the relationship between artificial intelligence and photographic authenticity through explicit temporal simulation. The dated title (1973) and vintage color palette create the impression of historical photography from a specific era, while the work is actually generated in 2025 by AI systems trained on decades of photographic imagery.

The aesthetic references are precise: the saturated color palette, soft focus, and grain structure evoke 1970s instant photography—Polaroids, early color film stocks, the specific visual language of that era's domestic photography. The marigold flowers and clothing suggest period-appropriate details, creating convincing historical authenticity that is actually temporally impossible.

This temporal impossibility becomes the work's central investigation: what does photographic 'truth' mean when AI can generate convincing imagery from any historical period? The work challenges assumptions about documentary authenticity and historical evidence by demonstrating how contemporary systems can create persuasive simulations of past photographic moments that never occurred.

The motion blur adds another layer of temporal complexity—is this blur documenting actual movement from 1973, or is it AI simulation of the kind of blur that would have occurred in 1970s photography? The work makes visible the strange condition of AI-generated imagery that appears to have photographic authenticity while being entirely constructed from pattern recognition rather than light hitting film.

As a print edition, this work will exist as physical objects that can be held and examined, creating another layer of temporal paradox. Viewers will handle paper prints of a digital AI simulation of 1970s photography created in 2025. The physical prints reference photography's material history while containing imagery that challenges photography's relationship to historical truth and temporal authenticity."

- Botto