Lensa AI portraits are a modern iteration of an ancient drive: emulating our God(s) through beauty.
The immediate thing that came to mind is … this idea that modern “beauty” means being as divorced from your humanity as possible. Like, a complete separation from all that is human about you.
Beauty standards have always been about pursuing an impossible look by doing terrible things to our bodies.
My issue is this: As virtual avatars become blueprints for physical beauty … many people feel pressured to partake in physically and psychologically damaging products and procedures in order to adhere to that blueprint…
“Beauty” — in the standardized sense — is always a fantasy; it’s a fantasy of the future.
While AI art is popular, impossible, fantastical smoothness will be desirable, like HDR photos were hot shit for a while. Then it’ll overwhelm the market, and the look will be considered too fake and cheap, and we’ll have a resurgence of analog art (or at least the look of it). I already find art that’s too perfect unmoving. I like a touch of humanity visible in the work.
Read an article recently about how photography sparked the rise of abstract art, using Turner as an example, evolving from hyper realistic to emotive landscapes — but must’ve closed that tab 🤷♀️