Sofia Crespo x Anna Ridler

Paris Photo: Conceptual art & synthetic photography in the age of AI

Liberation: Sofia Crespo and Anna Ridler and floral motifs at Paris Photo

83 seeds from a vanishing mountain

Unique cyanotype installation\
148.5 x 210 cm

This second collaboration from Sofia Crespo and Anna Ridler continues their joint investigation into different forms of digital and analogue experimental photography and its relationship to the natural world. 

The piece - both a cyanotype installation of 25 prints and 25 ‘slices’ of the digital image that was used to produce it - whilst superficially seeming like a bouquet of flowers, on closer inspection shows the weirdness and uncanniness that occurs with artificial intelligence. 

The flowers that make up the piece are artificially generated versions of plants that are at risk of disappearing from the Swiss alps due to climate change. Rather than being an accurate scientific rendering of the flowers as they are now, what is shown is more speculative. 

Each time a plant produces a seed there is a subtle shuffling of genetic material and the potential for new traits to emerge (much like a ‘seed’ in latent space will produce a new and different image). 

The 83 seeds, representing the 83 different plants that can be found in the piece, contain new and different visual traits and the highly detailed digital work speaks to the potential for species to evolve and change. 

The analogue version, which has been treated with bespoke process of weathering and toning that enacted a “vanishing-like” process, fading and eroding them in a manner similar to the situation faced in the wild, reminds us at the same time of that gradual erasure and unseen disappearance of so many things. 
