Inside the PhotoVogue Festival 2023

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This year the festival is dedicated to

what makes us human image in the age of AI.

We think that it s a very relevant topic to be discussed

and we will dive into it with seven exhibitions

and a three day symposium.

The exhibitions, three are dedicated to images generated

with AI, while four are still with our dear

and old photography that we are always gonna love.

So I think it holds to be,

we must do a distinction between images generated

with AI when we talk about art and fashion

and then when we talk about documentary photography.

Cause we can t treat them all in the same way.

I feel that in regard to art and fashion,

the only limits are to have good taste,

and there isn t a need to be adherent

to truth and to reality.

So I feel that artificial intelligence is just simply

another tool in the hands of an artist to shape their vision

and to give form to their vision.

So I see this as a possibility, not a risk.

While with documentary photography, there is a huge risk.

We live in a post truth area dominated by fake news

and we must be all very responsible about

what we put out there and be very transparent about it.

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Hello, my name is Alexey,

and I m presenting a project called One Last Journey

at the PhotoVogue Festival in Milano.

This project is a series of 40 Polaroids

that are telling a story of a couple that meets

for one last time before they split.

But the more interesting part about this project is that

all of the Polaroids that you see there are AI generated.

And the whole story is a metaphor of the loss

of the analog medium that we have now, a medium that is

now reduced to its aesthetical values only.

And this medium is mixed with a new technology, AI,

which we re scared,

still scared about this new emerging technology.

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Hello, I m Maria Mavropoulou,

and at PhotoVogue Festival, I m presenting part

of my new work, Imagined Images.

This was a quest for me to create a family photo album

by using AI, trying to fill the missing gaps

in my own family album

and created a new family album of moments

that might existed, might not.

And I was trying to question the relationship that AI has

to photography, what AI can do,

and how we will narrate our own stories from now on

that this new medium is available to us.

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Hi, I am Enrique Leyva.

I am photographer from Mexico.

I live in Oaxaca.

This is my project, it s called Mi Gente.

This project is based in my roots

when I was born in Mexico.

All my life has been exploring about my culture,

about the people that has been around me,

and the people that represent my physical aesthetic.

This project is based also in the skin color of Mexico,

the brown skin color, and the reds.

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Hi, I am Delali Ayivi, and I m presenting my series

My Chest Has Its Reasons created with my

creative duo called Togo YEYE.

I work together with my creative partner

called Malaika Nabillah.

We created a project looking at

sort of the emotional turmoil

or the emotional complexities of the relationship

between diaspora and people living in Togo.

And sort of we try to dissect the power imbalances

that come with these type of relationships.

So it s a quite abstract

and complex topic that we try to visualize.

The aim of Togo YEYE is essentially to include

everyone in our community regardless of identity,

and to encourage skill

and knowledge sharing through creative productions.

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Hello, my name is Daniel Le Jorge

and I here in PhotoVogue presenting my exhibition,

Andalusian Female Look.

It s related to the culture and folklore

and fashion of the Spanish woman,

Andalusian woman of South Spain.

And I just been over five years documenting

these different celebrations where folklore,

it s really present.

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Hello, I m Slivana Trevale,

and I m originally from Venezuela.

Raices, my project, is a population of many

different projects that I have done in the past

that I look, that I used to celebrate

and document the people that I admire

and that I think are beautiful.

People in Venezuela that have been told are not beautiful

according to the beauty standards in my country.

And with this project, I hope to show the love

and care that I have for my people.

It s a love letter to my country, to my roots.

And it s also a way to hold

and to document the traditions

and the beauty that my country has that is being lost

due to the crisis and all the issues that are going on.

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I m Juan Borgognoni.

I m here to present The Dress Is a House for the Body,

which is my last project,

which I made with my friend Alicia Rios.

Project about the poetry of everyday life.

And we are trying to speak about the way we feel the dress

and the way we speak

and we feel about the house inside us.

I m so happy to present it here.

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My name is Guido Castagnoli, traditional photographer

with more than 20 years of experience.

Just last April, I discover AI.

So it s a pretty new thing for me.

And this project is part of my early exploration

of this new tool.

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My name is Zahui Vann

and I m a photographer from Ivory Coast.

And this is a project on the beautiful women

from Africa and the rest of the world

that don t feel content with their inner selves.

And try to have attaches to different things that you want

or different modifications that you want in your body.

Just is there a project to tell you

you are beautiful as you are.

You are perfect as you are,

and you just have to accept yourself.

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Hello, my name is Maurizio Holc

and we are here at PhotoVogue Festival.

This is my project, Ser Libre, that means being free.

So this project is really important for me

because it was a project that birthed from my inner self

to embrace and discover my own identity

that was repressed for so many years,

in a way was like healing the wounds from my past.

These projects are testimonies

that are really adverse from the patriarchal, binary,

and heteronormative society that imposed from where we born,

our lives, our existing, how to feel, how to think.

So for me, this is really important to find other people

to be able to relate with others

and to feel represented in this world.

So for me, this project is really important

because it was a way to find myself

and it actually saved me to find people that I can relate

and people that I can find myself on it

and feel the community.

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Hi, my name is Claudia Revidat and I m from France.

My project is about women in Ethiopia, the Mursi Tribe.

I wanted to showcase the empowerment of women

and also talk about my childhood.

I discover a link between them and my story.

Using a superposition for me,

it was a kind of push the boundary of photography

and also using this aesthetic

to showcase the way they speak

because this tribe speak with color.

So I push the color and I push the layout

to explain the resilience of these woman

and to showcase the where they are strong.

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Thanks to our wonderful partners

because without them, none of this would be possible.

So thank you so much, Google Pixel.

Thank you so much, Puig and Audi.

Thank you.

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