90 Miles - A.I. Reportage Illustration | PhotoVogue Festival 2023: What Makes Us Human? Image in the Age of A.I.

[audience clapping]

Hey everybody.

Thank you for coming.

Super exciting to be here.

Yeah, just yesterday it was very inspiring

meeting some of the other artists here

and realizing that we collectively feel

that AI is really a way

to more fully express our vision,

and we can really illustrate stories

that were somehow previously impossible.

And coming from the world of photojournalism

where most of my life I ve photographed,

whatever is in front of me and where now

I can really tell stories

that are unlimited by time and space.

This is very exciting for me.

And so, as many of you, I received a lot

of criticism over the past year with this use of AI,

in my case, from the photojournalism community

over this experiment,

it s called 90 Miles, which was expected

and something that I really hoped would happen.

So we could encourage further conversation around this.

So in my work of over 25 years as a photographer,

one thing I ve learned is that people generally,

they do not wanna be voiceless,

but they want to be faceless.

So, with this in mind, a fundamental question

that I asked myself while creating 90 Miles

was if we can really tell real world stories

with photorealistic AI generated imagery.

Is this somehow useful?

90 miles is an AI reportage illustration experiment,

exploring realities of Cuban life,

including historical events in Cuban s preparation,

escape, crossing and Arrival in Florida.

This work is based on true stories,

but it is of course not real.

Reportage illustration has been used

for over 150 years in journalistic publications,

and in some way has been around since the dawn

of civilization, cave paintings, et cetera.

Reportage Illustration is a kind of visual journalism.

The illustrator conveys a narrative

and reports some specific moment.

The central premise really being storytelling

such as covered by Tim O Brien

that shows the growing chaos within the Trump White House

AI s improvements in photorealistic quality this year

inspired me to create 90 Miles in the tradition

of reportage illustration.

Midjourney was used and really I used Midjourney one

because the photorealistic quality

became very apparent in the early part of this year.

And also it was very kind of easy to learn.

And so I saw

what is now like this shift, right where we have

so many people using it because it s very easy

and you can get this photorealistic looking imagery.

And I found that prompting with words

that were more objective resulted in more authentic,

more documentary and photojournalistic looking imagery

versus using more subjective words like beautiful,

which would often result in the imagery

that was more studio looking.

The images that you re gonna see were not modified

beyond their initial generations,

really because I m not trying to hide the fact

that the imagery was created with AI, this early AI.

So I see the strange hands

and the body parts as really artifacts

of this early technology.

And I wanted to really protect

that authenticity, even though much of the imagery

lies within what is known as the uncanny valley.

So while working in Cuba from 2014 through 2016,

I tried to photograph the story of Cubans

who courageously escape each year in the United States,

mostly via homemade watercraft of some kind.

However, any coverage of refugees

escaping Cuba would risk endangering Cubans

who remained in the country.

There was just no safe

and ethical way for me to either access

or show this story in real life.

So I have been learning about this journey of escape

for years, watching TV and reading newspapers

while growing up in America.

A Google image search will reveal imagery of Cubans

coming to shore in Florida, mostly in homemade vessels.

The Cubans who attempt the crossing,

they re extremely resourceful,

which is reflected in their rafts

that are often assembled from inner tubes, pieces of wood

and plastic household supplies, et cetera.

Here you can see this is a vessel

that is made out of oil drums and scraps of metal.

This one is made out of a windsurfer

and pieces of foam and a plastic chair.

Here we have a repurpose automobile.

I saw more than one image like this on Google.

Here we have a man who was using wood shipping pallets

that were over a piece of foam

and he crossed 90 miles this way.

So the story of 90 Miles speaks to the 90 miles

of ocean that separates Cuba from Florida.

And the story begins in the late fifties

and early sixties, right after Fidel Castro came into power

and following the Bay of Pigs in the Cuban Missile crisis.

Really at this time, Cuba experienced

dramatic political change and its economy

quickly deteriorated, now 60 years later,

lack of economic opportunity story

remains arguably the largest motivator for an escape.

Last year, Cuba experienced its largest exodus

since the eighties,

really because of an ongoing economic crisis

with soaring inflation

alongside shortages of food and medicine.

And over a couple 100,000 Cubans

have fled so far this year.

So I was inspired really to illustrate

some of the motivations and reasons for Cubans to leave,

including everyday life and politics.

So I m just gonna spin through some imagery here.

Healthcare in Cuba is free for Cuban residents,

although challenges include minimal salaries for doctors,

poor facilities, poor provision

of equipment in the frequent absence of essential drugs.

This is a scene that I never

actually saw in Cuba, but a scene that I know has happened,

which is a physician driving a taxi.

Especially around the time of Obama

and the announcement of the new relations with America,

it was very common that you would ve Cubans

who work other jobs

that are government jobs

where they don t really make much money at all.

They could make more driving a cab in a day

than they could make in a whole month.

And I also illustrated major historical events

such as the Embassy Crisis

of 1980 when 10,000 Cubans tried gaining asylum

by taking refuge on the grounds of the embassies,

including the Peruvian embassy.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union

in the early 1990s,

Cuba fell into a crippling economic crisis

known as a special period.

With many citizens looking to flee the island,

the 1994 Maleconazo protest in Havana

was the largest anti-government demonstration

Cuba had seen since the Cuban Revolution.

In the weeks following,

Fidel allowed tens of thousands of Cubans

to leave the island.

Also during the special period,

the Frikis , a Cuban punk subculture

that originated in the 1980s,

were known for injecting the cells

with HIV positive blood in order to qualify

for state run AIDS clinics with food and shelter.

Many Frikis chose HIV over starvation and homelessness.

Then I generated imagery of Cubans preparing to escape,

building watercraft

that would carry them the 90 miles

across the ocean into Florida.

[people chattering]

This is sort of imagination of a prototype,

an imagery that might represent the escape.

This is money given for the trip.

So 1994, March 13th, 37 Cuban men, women,

children who attempted to escape Cuba

on a tugboat were drowned at sea.

The Cuban Coast Guard was accused of sinking the vessel,

while refusing to rescue some of the passengers.

There s no photography

or any kind of imagery that is known from this event

that I ve seen at least.

Amnesty International stated, there s sufficient evidence

that indicates that it was an official operation

and that if events occurred in the way described,

those who died as a result of the incident

were victims of extra judicial execution.

And then I generated imagery

so I could illustrate the crossing of the Florida Strait

from Cuba to America.

This is the repair of the helm of the craft,

which is the wheel that is often used on ships to navigate.

Repairs in the engine room,

there s a storm.

Many of these craft have been lost at sea, of course,

and the rescue by the Coast Guard

is a common occurrence.

And the arrival in Florida

and the everyday life there,

often it s in the Keys or it s in Miami.

This is a Floridian family

watching Cuban refugees come ashore on a boat.

Salvation Army handing out clothing, Shelter.

Ravel at a supermarket where there s many options

of any single product versus in Cuba

where it s usually extremely limited.

And at a restaurant.

That is it, thank you so much, appreciate it.

[audience clapping]