Valley Girls

First independent conceptual collection.

The uncanny valley was a specific moment in time. We were rapidly approaching it, about to move past it. The window was closing — soon AI-generated faces would be indistinguishable, or obviously synthetic, but this in-between zone would be gone. I wanted to document that moment before it closed.

Core thesis: AI is a mirror. It can only reflect what we trained it on, which means it reflects us, distortedly.

To make that argument visible, I had to fight the model. Default outputs were overwhelmingly beautiful white faces — young, symmetrical, western. Getting the model to produce young, old, middle-aged, Black, white, Asian faces required active curatorial pressure. That struggle is part of the work. The difficulty of getting the model to see everyone is the point.