Autochromes

Until recently, Yvonne Todd was a photography purist, resolutely shooting on large format film cameras. The rigours of her practice provided structure and control in her work and sense of consistency that she valued as an artist.

Last year, during postgraduate study (Masters of Fine Arts) she began experimenting with other ways of making art. At the end of 2024, she began creating a series of images using AI.  Her expectations were low, up until this time, she viewed AI-generated images as 'visual slop', largely comprised of lame,  predictable photographic and illustrative clichés.

But her experiments spoke to her interest in constructed characters and the idea that AI could be a valuable tool for the imagination.

Todd's experience with AI has since developed into a strange and singular passion; she feels an affinity with the medium and its peculiarities.  Her existing knowledge of staged photography now informs the detailed and nuanced prompts she writes to create images that connect with the psychological portraits her work is known for. These prompts, which are essentially a form of programming or coding language, allow Todd to build on aspects of familiarity and convention, elements and tropes that she has been invested in throughout her career as an artist.

Todd’s Autochromes series is comprised of AI-generated images of winged female figures, neither fully divine nor entirely human. Each figure hovers in a timeless zone, part ethereal emissary, part rural revenant.  Like much of Todd’s former imagery these “angels” inhabit an eerie space between sincerity and artificiality, glamour and discomfort. 

This series is partly inspired by the aesthetics of supernatural visitations and visions, including the 1917 appearance of the Virgin Mary to the three shepherd children of Fátima. Autochromes is an observation and lament on the transformation of photography. It is both a homage and eulogy, a meditation on the demise of Todd’s own traditional practice. What we once called a photograph has become a composite: artificial, endless, and ghosted by the history it mimics.