Alejandro Loureiro Lorenzo

Alejandro Loureiro Lorenzo is a visual artist and an independent researcher based in New York. He is a professor of photography at Queens College, CUNY, and a Ph.D. Candidate at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. He has taught at CUNY, TCNJ, Kean, and Rutgers University. His current work focuses on restoring memory via generative AI and producing photographic surfaces that challenge our perception of material culture.

Recent Works

Above, Restoring Memory via Generative AI

Photography and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Royal Photographic Society

AI generative technologies expand the capabilities of the photographic medium to produce images that resemble photographs while maintaining its credibility. Assumed perceptual attributes are confronted with new AI technologies increasingly integrated into all aspects of image-making, coexisting with established ways of seeing.

AI is not photography as such, but a generative procedure trained from repertoires of images, subjects, and ideas. Traditional photography limitations are related to camera technologies, camera position and frame selection, settings, recording materials, subjects, and photographers’ choices —including cameraless photography— in this regard, AI and traditional photography are similar, as the ultimate product is an image. Both rely on the capture and the interpretation of existing content. One could argue that both traditional photography and AI are based on repertoires of choices and subjects; AI brings a new dimension to photography by adding the capability of incorporating nonexistent elements from collective memories ab initio.

It is a new paradigm as it allows for incorporating elements into our work from collective memory, destabilizing the ontology of the image as we know it with all the disruptive possibilities that it instigates.

My work examines how current photographic technologies expand the medium capabilities to create doctored images while maintaining credibility. Assumed perceptive attributes are confronted by new technologies such as AI, increasingly embedded in every aspect of editing and printing technologies, interposing infographics and subtext that coexists with established ways of looking. Images are to be ubiquitous and quickly disseminated.

My academic research examines the institutional support of innovation. The process has informed my studio practice by allowing me to deliberately employ digital imaging to assimilate other media, developing a critique of current hybridization practices in contemporary art. In doing this, I explore aspects of art’s relative autonomy yet polymorphic nature.

Considering actor-network theory, e.g., Latour, and strategic-tactic theories, e.g., Certeau, along with other sources and other media developments concerning audience expectations, I examine how these shape and mediate collective experiences. I primarily work at the intersection of art, social science, and economics in the context of new media, studying contemporary art practices as intentional, thus far, heterogeneous, instrumental activities.

Ultimately, I’m researching the increasing support of revisionist, disruptive practices by institutions as part of developing new schemes and ever-evolving cultural strategies that seek to retool traditional activist/countercultural practices as a repository of institutional tropes.

Above, L to R

Untitled 2022 mixed media & chromogenic print 5 ¼ x 11 1/8 in

Untitled 2022 mixed media & chromogenic print 11 x 9.5 in

Untitled 2022 mixed media & chromogenic print 11.5 x 14 in

Untitled 2022 mixed media & chromogenic print 14 x 8 1/4 in

Untitled 2022 mixed media & chromogenic print 11 x 17 in

Untitled 2022 mixed media & chromogenic print 17 x 11 in

Untitled 2022 mixed media & chromogenic print 17 x 11 in

Above, L to R

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic print 13.287 x 20 in 33.75 x 50. 8 cm Edition of 3 plus 2 AP

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic print 13.287 x 20 in 33.75 x 50. 8 cm Edition of 3 plus 2 AP

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic print 13.287 x 20 in 33.75 x 50. 8 cm Edition of 3 plus 2 AP

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic print 13.287 x 20 in 33.75 x 50. 8 cm Edition of 3 plus 2 AP

 

 

Above, L to R

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic Print 10.347 in x 15.573 in 26.28 x 39.56 cm (detail)

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic Print 10.347 in x 15.573 in 26.28 x 39.56 cm (detail)

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic Print 10.347 in x 15.573 in 26.28 x 39.56 cm (detail)

Above, L to R

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic print 6.25 x 8.333 in

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic print 18.107 x 22.777 in

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic print 5.333 x 6.71 in

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic print 6.667 x 10.027 in

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic print 9.17 x 16.007 in

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic print 10.88 x 16.427 in

Untitled 2021 Chromogenic print 16.427 x 10.88 in

Above,

Untitled 2022 Chromogenic print 10.88 x 16. 427 in 27.64 x 41.72 cm