描述
photography, video, AI, plaster death mask, artificial flowers
Almost 150 years ago the body of a young woman pulled from the Seine was brought to the Paris Morgue. She was never identified, but the death mask of “Inconnue de la Seine” became a sensation. Her beauty and the mystery of her death captivated the public. Artists and writers speculated on the details of her story, imagining a love affair that ended in shame and suicide.
In our current time, with women’s rights in regression, Inconnue’s enigmatic smile has new resonance. We see the same difficult decisions being faced by millions of women across the US, and the pain borne by those without alternatives.
In this series we mourn these Unknown Women. Their portraits were created by AI tools prompted with the US cities that have the most prohibitive women’s rights legislation. These generated faces were then projected onto the death mask of Inconnue de la Seine and photographed in a shrine of artificial flowers and dry plants.