Front End

The rapid expansion of digital visuality continues to redefine our everyday lives, challenging our ability to separate conventional reality from an increasingly synthetic landscape. “Front End” addresses this contemporary dilemma, functioning as a conceptual training ground that prompts a more conscious reception of the digital images that flood our screens and shape our perception.

A fundamental pillar of my creative process is that I manually construct intricate mock-ups in my studio and capture them directly through the lens without any post-manipulation. Even though the camera documents a physical reality, the final photographs occupy a fluid, liminal space. This unconventional imagery deliberately pulls the rug out from under the viewers, causing an enigmatic disorientation in their visual perception. This serves as a direct analogy for our current culture, where emerging technologies increasingly detach our daily lives from reality, and image production from physical, manual creation.

Far from being mere visual games, these compositions function as a critical response to the inherent characteristics and inner mechanics of virtual environments. This tension challenges the audience to interpret what they are truly looking at and question the indexical status of the image. Ultimately, its underlying photographic nature is only revealed through the subtle material imperfections within the details, disrupting the digital illusion and forcing a reconsideration of the relationship between the camera and the real. Created in 2018, well before the recent boom of generative AI, this series anticipated a trajectory that has only intensified today, through which the project’s critical ontological reading of the medium has gained even greater resonance in our screen-dominated world.

Dávid Biró is part of Issue 18 by Guest Editor Hank Willis Thomas.