Michael Whitham
The Body for Broadcast: Synthetic Selves and the Post-Photographic Condition
From its inception, photography has been haunted by artifice. Before generative AI, the most prominent inflection point was the advent of Photoshop. Fred Ritchin noted, “Photography used to imply presence, ‘I was there.’ Now it implies possibility, ‘This could have happened.’”
Today, identity is no longer a snapshot. It’s a showroom, a skin, an interface. Polished, parameterized, always pending updates. We are not just seeing more images. We’re seeing more selves. Curated. Filtered. Stretched and idealized.
Our presentation will explore how photography’s shift from record towards digital construction overlaps with the widespread creation of synthetic selves. Generative AI, face filters, deepfakes, and avatars don’t just manipulate images, they normalize identity as something designed, optimized, and performed. We’ll ask how these tools might alter our relationship to authenticity, beauty, and the evolving boundaries of the self.
What does it mean to look like “yourself” in 2025? And whose eyes are you looking through when you decide?
As psychoanalyst Susie Orbach observed, “the terrain of the body is changing.” Many now manage two bodies: the physical one in jogging pants, and the digital one “for broadcast” — augmented, filtered, detached. As AI accelerates, we’re seeing not just media manipulation but a deepening psychological split between the self that is lived and the self that is shown.
This divide echoes the pressure to create a “personal brand,” a process Naomi Klein critiques for “entrenching fixed and phony selves.” And shouldn’t we be cautious? As Delia Cai put it: “You’re a person, not a brand… the business is standing on you.” As branding logic merges with identity, we risk reducing ourselves to the logic of The Sims: a world of narrow binaries (“tough” vs. “feminine”), mutually exclusive and depressingly reductive.
Yet synthetic image-making is not inherently hollow. In I Heard Her Call My Name, Lucy Sante describes how FaceApp helped her visualize and affirm her trans identity: a simple app became a gateway to self-recognition. A 2022 Tsinghua University study, I Found a More Attractive Deepfaked Self, found that AI-generated representations could aid those with body image disturbance, a condition notoriously resistant to treatment.
Tools like Apple’s Vision Pro, Elon Musk’s Neuralink, and humble Instagram filters blur the boundary between digital and embodied existence. The visual language of selfhood is no longer photographic. It can be speculative, hyperreal, and performative.
In a moment gripped by fear and suspicion around AI, our presentation will ask: what if we viewed filters, avatars, and AI faces not as lies, but as sketches — rehearsals of selves, glimpses of latent truths? What if we stopped asking, “Is this real?” and started asking: “Does this help me feel more like me?”
Increasingly, brands, businesses, and tech platforms are not just mirrors of culture but makers of it. How might they support experimentation with self-expression rather than codifying it? Can they build tools that allow for play, plurality, or reinvention? What role might they play in expanding, rather than restricting, how we understand and inhabit digital identity?
What might be gained if we saw synthetic images not as threats to authenticity, but as invitations?
Today, identity is no longer a snapshot. It’s a showroom, a skin, an interface. Polished, parameterized, always pending updates. We are not just seeing more images. We’re seeing more selves. Curated. Filtered. Stretched and idealized.
Our presentation will explore how photography’s shift from record towards digital construction overlaps with the widespread creation of synthetic selves. Generative AI, face filters, deepfakes, and avatars don’t just manipulate images, they normalize identity as something designed, optimized, and performed. We’ll ask how these tools might alter our relationship to authenticity, beauty, and the evolving boundaries of the self.
What does it mean to look like “yourself” in 2025? And whose eyes are you looking through when you decide?
As psychoanalyst Susie Orbach observed, “the terrain of the body is changing.” Many now manage two bodies: the physical one in jogging pants, and the digital one “for broadcast” — augmented, filtered, detached. As AI accelerates, we’re seeing not just media manipulation but a deepening psychological split between the self that is lived and the self that is shown.
This divide echoes the pressure to create a “personal brand,” a process Naomi Klein critiques for “entrenching fixed and phony selves.” And shouldn’t we be cautious? As Delia Cai put it: “You’re a person, not a brand… the business is standing on you.” As branding logic merges with identity, we risk reducing ourselves to the logic of The Sims: a world of narrow binaries (“tough” vs. “feminine”), mutually exclusive and depressingly reductive.
Yet synthetic image-making is not inherently hollow. In I Heard Her Call My Name, Lucy Sante describes how FaceApp helped her visualize and affirm her trans identity: a simple app became a gateway to self-recognition. A 2022 Tsinghua University study, I Found a More Attractive Deepfaked Self, found that AI-generated representations could aid those with body image disturbance, a condition notoriously resistant to treatment.
Tools like Apple’s Vision Pro, Elon Musk’s Neuralink, and humble Instagram filters blur the boundary between digital and embodied existence. The visual language of selfhood is no longer photographic. It can be speculative, hyperreal, and performative.
In a moment gripped by fear and suspicion around AI, our presentation will ask: what if we viewed filters, avatars, and AI faces not as lies, but as sketches — rehearsals of selves, glimpses of latent truths? What if we stopped asking, “Is this real?” and started asking: “Does this help me feel more like me?”
Increasingly, brands, businesses, and tech platforms are not just mirrors of culture but makers of it. How might they support experimentation with self-expression rather than codifying it? Can they build tools that allow for play, plurality, or reinvention? What role might they play in expanding, rather than restricting, how we understand and inhabit digital identity?
What might be gained if we saw synthetic images not as threats to authenticity, but as invitations?
Michael Whitham is a senior creative, producer, and commissioner currently based in New York City, where he works with the independent Creative Studio and Artist Bureau, Hugo & Marie. Straddling both divisions of Hugo & Marie, Michael works with their Creative Studio on concept, strategy, and copywriting for clients including Saint Laurent, Tiffany & Co and Clinique, while also consulting on the production and development of special projects and collaborations for Hugo & Marie's multi-disciplinary Artist Bureau roster, which include NEW INC alumni Tin & Ed. He has worked as a Producer on artist collaborations with, among others, Hermès, Apple, Chanel, Google, and Nike. Before Hugo & Marie, Michael was Head of Creative at Warner Music UK and has worked closely on visuals for Coldplay, Sam Smith, and Dua Lipa. Michael has a particular interest in helping artists develop their creative and professional practice.