Boris Eldagsen - The Leftovers

Technique: Hahnemühle Fine Art Print.
Image size: 26 x 15.40 cm.
Sheet size: 30 × 24 cm.
Exclusive 2022 edition.
Edition: 10 + 2 AP
Signed, dated, and Ed. No. by the artist on the reverse in pencil.

Boris Eldagsen – The Leftovers

The Leftovers is among the most emotionally powerful works in Pseudomnesia I. Three children gaze directly into the camera, their faces oscillating between vulnerability, rigidity, and an indefinable unease. The impression of historical children's portraits—likely from the first half of the 20th century—immediately evokes a sense of trust. But this very trust is undermined. Postures, hands, and lines of sight appear slightly shifted, almost flawed, as if memory itself had miscalculated.

This reveals the unique quality of AI-generated images: they don't reproduce reality, but rather its visual grammar – and deliberately distort it. The children are not individuals, but remnants of a collective visual memory. "Leftovers" refers not only to what has been left behind, but also to what has been discarded, to what has gone untold.

Eldagsen uses AI to liberate photography from its humanistic promise. The image doesn't document fate, but rather simulates suffering. This is precisely where its radicalism lies. The Leftovers reveals that in the age of AI, photography says less about the past than about our willingness to believe images – even when they never actually happened.