Greek artist Elena Efeoglou reimagines historical portraits by August Sander using AI-generated visuals and fictional texts, creating speculative biographies that bridge photography and narrative speculation.
As part of the “Artist Meets Archive” initiative by Internationale Photoszene Köln, Elena Efeoglou (b. 1978, Drama, Greece) explores August Sander’s iconic portrait series “People of the 20th Century.” During her summer 2024 residency at Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, she examined numerous Sander photographs, selecting ten that resonated with her.
For each image, Efeoglou composed fictional texts that speculate on the subjects’ lives, emotions, and social contexts. These writings served as conceptual springboards for AI-generated portraits that echo the visual language of Sander’s originals while diverging from their documentary nature. The resulting images act as narrative echoes—resonant, imaginative, and unconstrained by historical accuracy.
By blending archival research with AI aesthetics, the exhibition opens up new interpretive possibilities and questions the boundaries between memory, projection, and reality. Efeoglou’s work becomes a speculative dialogue with photographic heritage, suggesting how contemporary image-making can both revisit and reinvent the past.
