One thing about inhabiting a face is that we can never quite see it as others do. Mirrors give us an inverted image. Photos freeze us in time from odd angles and sometimes in unforgiving detail. Staring into a phone camera, preening to check our makeup or under-eye circles gives us a hyper-real mirror, but this too is distorted and vice versa. Even video doesn’t quite capture us for ourselves, for the simple reason that we can’t view ourselves objectively. We look too closely; maybe we’re critical, or maybe we’re thankful that we got out in a way. We can’t just take stock of how we look to someone else.
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This is part of the appeal of portraits. It is not the objective reality of who we are, but a version of how someone else sees us translated to the page or canvas. It always amazes and moves me to think, while in art museums, that before photography the only simple way to see a static image of yourself was through the brush or pen or chisel, necessarily filtered through the creative intelligence someone else’s. Standing before John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Gretchen Osgood Warren and her daughter, we see not only what they might have looked like, but also the specific things Sargent saw: the high pink of Warren’s cheeks, the dreaminess of her daughter’s expression , the silvery pink of her dress, the candles behind fading in strokes of paint into the background. The way her scarf falls gray and faded to the floor is something only Sargent could have seen and painted.
Cameras have gradually made it uncommon to see images of ourselves, but there’s still something magical about having another person pay this kind of sustained creative attention to you. This is part of the reason why people pay for caricatures on the boardwalk and have portraits of themselves painted in oils. It’s a real pleasure to see how someone else sees us, experiencing a strange, perhaps tenuous connection to their artistic vision. Or perhaps with their attention: after all, a portrait is the fruit of an intense aesthetic focus, and what could be more flattering than having that focus on yourself?
Lensa borrows, in a poor way, from that roll call. But these images are of course not how someone else sees us. They are the naked eye of an inhuman intelligence, mathematically combining features, adding up lips and nose and eyes into an approximation of you. There’s no real potential for beauty here, I think – not because the images are produced algorithmically (I believe it’s possible for computers to create compelling works of art), but because I don’t think the avatars measure up to either realism or artistry. They live in between the two and are usually good for evaluating, again, what we might look like. Their style mimics fantasy characters, comic books and heroes, portraying you in a flattering spotlight – but even in this they fail to elevate you specifically, instead slipping your image into generic visual tropes. You could be anyone, and in fact you are!
The fundamental appeal of these kinds of apps is, of course, our own involvement. Much has been said about how the Internet fuels self-obsession by pushing us to act for others: on Facebook, people announce banal life events and political views; on Instagram we interrupt our fun to show others how much fun we’re having; on Twitter, we love our personal lives for laughs. But there is also something to be said for how digital tools can function as a playroom mirror, fueling an entirely personal fascination with ourselves. I can’t help staring at Lensa’s hundred semi-realistic versions of my face. (Actually 110: There was a bonus of 10 “Holiday Spirit” styles, including one where I stared down moodily while wearing a Santa hat.) I didn’t share these avatars with anyone. Even those who posted theirs only shared a fraction of what was being produced. These images seemed meant to be admired in private. They are like the lists people post of the best moments of the year, or memories of dreams – things that, even when shared with others, are always more interesting to ourselves.
