Portraits in art matter deeply. One in five artworks is a portrait. Why? Because portraits are the presence of the absent. The faraway, the dead, the ones we miss.

In Europe, when kings waged endless wars, sending their people to slaughter for the sake of hubris, massive portraits of the rulers were erected on the battlefield. A substitute presence, larger than life, towering over the blood and dust. That craving for presence hasn’t faded.

Now, it’s selfies—one thousand snapped every second. Not art, but an antidote to our fear of disappearing in a world where surface trumps depth.

Lately, AI-generated portraits flooding social media. Some eerily lifelike, others so Hollywood-polished they verge on grotesque. Still others born of sci-fi nightmares or horror tropes. Like selfies, they mostly reveal our herd instincts.

A few months ago, I created a series of 70 portraits on black backgrounds. The selection I present here reflects on portraiture in art. In classical painting, portraits were always steeped in context—settings, symbols, narrative. AI portraits have none of that. No roots, no stories. They rise from the void of algorithms, from a bland, colorless darkness.

Yet out of this blackness come echoes of reality. Glimmers of the real. The faces, the postures, the details—they speak to our feelings, our cultures. They provoke emotions. What matters here isn’t where these faces come from, but where they take us.