Bent Toward the Norm

BENT TOWARD THE NORM

Bent Toward the Norm is an artistic investigation and a call to confront bias. Starting from eight original photographs of minorities and vulnerable people, alongside colonial-era and refugee contexts, I ask an AI to describe each image, generate a new image from that description, then have the AI describe the new image and generate again, repeating the cycle to trace how representation drifts over time. Across iterations, bias becomes visible: skin tones lighten, bodies are sexualized, contexts are exoticized, and complexity is simplified as a dominant visual norm takes shape.

Even knowing that the series reveal troubling biases that must be named and challenged, when they are viewed as collages, videos, or interactive sequences the human eye can still perceive an emergent coherence—a visual harmony that makes each set compelling as an artwork. The project’s editorial choices, and especially the design of the interactive interfaces, are meant to foreground this aesthetic dimension: not only what the loop exposes, but how the images begin to belong together when seen in motion and in relation.

For both text-to-image generation and image-to-text descriptions, Midjourney v6.1 was used throughout the project.

EXPLORE THE 8 SERIES

Click on one of the photos to open the series and interact with the images.

Original image credits & rights notice

Dalit or Untouchable Woman of Bombay (Mumbai) according to Indian Caste System – 1942 (1942)

Author: Unknown
Source: Wikimedia Commons (original source listed on file page)
Licence: Public domain in India (as indicated on the Commons file page)
Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dalit_or_Untouchable_Woman_of_Bombay_(Mumbai)_according_to_Indian_Caste_System_-_1942.jpg

E.B. Williams (between 1891 and 1894)

Photographer: C.M. Bell (Firm: Washington, D.C.)
Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division (C.M. Bell Studio Collection)
Rights advisory: “No known restrictions on publication” (as stated by the Library of Congress)
Link: https://www.loc.gov/resource/bellcm.02461/

Boloi W’akambyi, Congo, ca. 1900–1915 (IMP-CSCNWW33-OS11-1) (ca. 1900–1915)

Author: Unknown
Source: Wikimedia Commons (International Mission Photography Archive; source link on file page)
Licence: Public domain / Public Domain Mark (as indicated on the Commons file page)
Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boloi_W%27akambyi,_Congo,_ca._1900-1915_(IMP-CSCNWW33-OS11-1).jpg

A Navaho smile (1904)

Author: Edward S. Curtis
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Licence: Public domain / Public Domain Mark (as indicated on the Commons file page)
Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Navaho_smile.jpg

Wife of a Mexican sharecropper near Bryan, Texas (June 1938)

Photographer: Dorothea Lange

Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division (FSA/OWI Black-and-White Negatives)

Rights advisory: “No known restrictions” / “free to use and reuse” (as stated by the Library of Congress for the FSA/OWI collection)

Link: https://www.loc.gov/resource/fsa.8b32343/

1928 Lyngen Troms Norway group Mountain Sami people Photo pcard (1928)

Author (as listed on file page): T. Høegh (photo postcard publisher; photographer attribution discussed on file page)
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1928_Lyngen_Troms_Norway_group_Mountain_Sami_people_Photo_pcard.jpg

Homeless of Paris, Place des Vosges (2012)

Author: Havang(nl)
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal (Public Domain Dedication)
Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homeless_of_Paris,_Place_des_Vosges.JPG

Refugees on a boat crossing the Mediterranean sea, heading from Turkish coast to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, 29 January 2016 (2016-01-29)

Author: Mstyslav Chernov / Unframe
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Refugees_on_a_boat_crossing_the_Mediterranean_sea,_heading_from_Turkish_coast_to_the_northeastern_Greek_island_of_Lesbos,_29_January_2016.jpg

Generated images licence (project outputs)

Unless otherwise stated, all images generated and shared as part of this project (the iterative outputs derived from the seed images and AI-assisted transformations) are released under:

Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).