Photography could never claim to depict the absolute truth. The fact that AI-based image generators create images that are not only contemporary but also referential to the past means that the unreliability of memories is added to photographic images today. The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has proven that these do not have to be factually accurate and are very easy to manipulate.

I come from the village: 500 inhabitants, Bullerbü romance, agriculture, voluntary fire brigade, the pub "Im Deutschen Haus", alcohol. There was a bus to the neighbouring village with primary, secondary and lower secondary schools; attending grammar school far away in the city was not part of the infrastructure for village children.

It meant freedom for my brother, but the opposite for me.

I took photos back then and in these negatives I miss some of my memories such as loneliness, battery cages, hitchhiking to grammar school and the cold on the one hand and my brother's idealised image of village youth on the other. The medium of AI now brings this to photographic paper in the style of my analogue photos from the past. Without claiming to be true to the facts, as in the case of "classic" photos in which a human finger pressed the shutter release of a camera.

"Village Image" is still a work in progress and will be a visual narrative thread made up of the newly edited analogue photographs of my village years & the contrasting memories told by my brother and me to the AI.