What is authenticity? Does authenticity still exist in visual culture in the age of social media?
Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok. Scrolling and scrolling I keep seeing similar aesthetics everywhere, always the same: it might be the algorithm, it might be a trend. But how are we supposed to create in this environment?
Surely this dilemma has often existed throughout history. Just as Impressionism or Romanticism eventually came to an end, this too will end. But what is left afterwards? In the past, there were no algorithms dictating aesthetics, but now there are.
Now it has become a status, the status of being something, of constantly belonging to a specific aesthetic. Of having to show ourselves all the time, everywhere. But what is truly authentic when, in reality, it’s forced? When your vision can only flow through certain visual aesthetics because we are constantly at the mercy of the digital world.
At this point, visual culture is no longer authentic but an AI machine that forces us into something. And this is what remains inside a sacred world in which we feel fine because we have taken our gaze away from reality, and when that happens, authenticity is lost. We need to train our eyes on reality.
If we train our eyes to look beyond, it makes us human and capable of creating true visual culture—not trends, but an eye open to exploration against the algorithms. And social media are not necessary for that to happen. Because they are taking what is most sacred about us: being human, and being able to look beyond
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