In Cursed, Charlie Engman exploits generative AI’s uncanny misrepresentations of the physical world to highlight the pleasure, humour, and horror of our bodies. Through this engrossing portfolio of images, we repeatedly experience AI’s characteristic slippage between expectation and outcome, confronting our preconceptions of how bodies should be, and how they should look.  Can simulation and collective knowledge lead to innovation and individuation, or does this recycling of image and ideas mean we are doomed to repeat our failures? Can AI’s detachment from reality help better illuminate the blessings and curses of living in a human body?

Cursed stands as a testament to Engman’s visionary role in a rapidly evolving and highly contentious field, offering an immersive exploration of uncharted artistic territories and proposing a new paradigm for the future and possibilities of photography.

Charlie Engman is an artist, photographer, and the art director of the fashion brand, Collina Strada. He holds a degree in Japanese and Korean Studies from the University of Oxford and is the author of Hello Chaos, a Love Story: The Disorder of Seeing and Being Seen (SPBH Editions, 2024), I Care a Lotta, I Wear Collina Strada (Rizzoli, 2023) and MOM (Edition Patrick Frey, 2020). His work has been featured in AnOther Magazine, Dazed, Garage, POP, and T: The New York Times Style Magazine, among other publications. His commercial clients include Prada, Marni, Adidas, Hermès, Kenzo, Nike, Vivienne Westwood, and Stella McCartney.