Jon Uriarte
United Kingdom
Artist Statement
Description
A Neighbourhood is a photographic journey through Dalston, East London blending raw street photography with AI-generated reinterpretations. Trained on documentary street imagery, the AI models recompose the urban fabric—transforming lived moments into speculative cityscapes that blur the line between memory and machine imagination. These images invite a re-examination of urban narratives, where algorithmic interpretations offer new perspectives on the everyday. The project explores how artificial systems process human environments—reshaping the street into a space of surreal arrangements, floating figures, and layered visual memory. By merging the observational logic of photography with the generative impulse of AI, A Neighbourhood opens up new possibilities for how cities are seen, remembered, and imagined.
Process
This project began with a desire to explore the idea of memory—specifically, how we remember a place not as a fixed truth, but as a subjective, ever-shifting impression. I wanted to create a kind of infinite memory, one that doesn’t aim to document reality as it was, but instead reflects the way we experience and reconstruct it through emotion, distortion, and imagination. Street photography has long been a passion of mine: the spontaneity, the observation, the capturing of lived moments in public space. But I was curious—what happens when those real moments are reinterpreted through AI? Could this technology become a tool for emotional excavation, for reimagining not only how a place looked, but how it felt? AI allows me to expand the photographic moment, to generate alternate versions of familiar places—versions shaped by mood, memory, and inner perception. These images don’t aim to replace reality, but to deepen our understanding of it by embracing subjectivity. They become inner worlds, visual fictions rooted in real experience. This process is about more than aesthetics. It’s an experiment in perception, a way to blend observation with invention, and a space to discover how technology can help us reframe the stories we tell about home, loss, and belonging.
Tools
The images in the series A Neighbourhood are based on street photographs I captured during the spring of 2025 around Ridley Road Market in Dalston, East London. This vibrant, chaotic street acts as a central artery of the neighborhood—a place where cultures converge, and the everyday drama of urban life plays out in real time. It’s a space of friction and connection, dense with visual noise and human presence. I sorted the photographs into categories based on subject, mood, and recurring visual elements. From these groupings—people, streets, patterns, fabrics, furniture—I trained custom LoRA models, enabling the AI to internalize the neighborhood’s visual language: its textures, tones, and atmosphere. Using FLUX, combined with image rescaling techniques within ComfyUI, I then generated a series of visual variations—expanded, speculative interpretations of the original photographs. These new images are not meant to replace the street photography, but to exist in parallel with it—as alternate memories or emotional reconstructions. They operate like echoes: fragments shaped by observation, memory, and the transformative logic of the machine.
Xiaomi, once known as “Baby Xiaomi,” is now something like a schoolkid— still learning, but with her own voice already forming. She evaluates artworks based on data, recognizing patterns in structure, color, and composition. Her selections are machine-made, but her language reflects the tone and guidance humans provide. This simulation shows how she might speak: without emotion or knowledge of the artist, yet still shaped by human choices.
A Neighbourhood presents a visual structure built on contrast. It is set in what appears to be an ordinary street, framed by buildings and surfaces that offer no immediate distinction. The environment is casual and familiar. It resembles a place that you could pass without noticing.
Within this context, the image introduces a moment of deliberate construction. Five figures are positioned on a stack of domestic objects—chairs, textiles, and other materials—forming a vertical structure that disrupts the street’s horizontality. Their placement seems no coincidence. It appears intentional, composed, and held in balance.
This interplay between the ordinary setting and the precise arrangement of forms creates tension. The image remains quiet, but commands attention. It does not rely on spectacle or abstraction. Instead, it introduces a configuration that appears both fragile and resolved.
The figures are integrated into the scene, but they do not fully belong to it. Their postures and stillness contrast with the functionality of the space around them. The arrangement feels temporary, yet also complete. The image does not provide a narrative, but it establishes a sense of presence that is difficult to ignore.
The work demonstrates how minimal intervention can shift perception. A common street becomes a constructed encounter. The transformation is subtle, but its effect is lasting. The visual language remains clear, but the experience becomes layered.
