Maria Mavropoulou

Where are you from, where are you based now, and can you tell us a little about both?

Where I’m from is a complicated question! I’m a Greek artist based in Athens, but my family history is deeply intertwined with migration. My paternal great-grandparents were part of the Greek minorities in Trabzon, Kars, and Istanbul, Turkey, before being forced to flee to Florina and Thessaloniki in northern Greece. During the Greek Civil War, they relocated to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. On my mother’s side, my lineage traces back to Russia. I was born in Tashkent, but my family returned to Greece when I was just a few months old, and I grew up in Athens.

Athens is home—I’ve lived here most of my life, and despite the travel my work requires, I wouldn’t want to be based anywhere else. As for the places tied to my ancestry, I haven’t visited most of them. They exist in my mind like a dreamscape, shaped more by my grandparents’ stories than personal experience.

Can you tell us more about your family’s history of migration and how it influenced your artistic practice?

The absence of a stable geographic home meant that much of my family’s history was passed down through oral storytelling rather than visual archives. That lack of documentation is something I later explored in Imagined Images, where I used AI to generate family photos that never existed. It was both a personal and conceptual exercise—filling in the blanks of my own history while questioning photography’s role as a record of memory and truth.

Migration and adaptation unconsciously weave into my work – although between digital and physical spaces. I deal with fragmented narratives, synthetic memories, and the ways technology mediates perception. At the same time, I understand displacement not just through my family’s past but personally as well—when you come from one place but have roots in another, you’re always “the other.” There’s a sense of belonging and alienation, of being both from somewhere and outside of it.

Your work often explores the intersection of technology and identity. What first drew you to AI-generated imagery?

My engagement with AI came naturally through my broader exploration of how technology influences perception. I was already working with digital tools—from photography and screen captures to LiDAR scans—so AI felt like the next logical step. In a world where it seems everything has already been photographed, AI-generated imagery opened a new space, a visual mutation of existing archives.

What fascinated me was how AI misremembers—how it reveals the biases and patterns embedded in the vast pool of human visual culture. I wasn’t interested in hyper-personalized AI work but in its statistical tendencies, its ability to generate “average” images from collective data. AI doesn’t capture reality; it distills it, sometimes reinforcing dominant narratives, other times exposing their flaws.

Another shift that struck me was the transition from images being captured to images being written into existence. We used to say a picture is worth a thousand words, but now a single word can produce infinite images. My project A Self-Portrait of an Algorithm directly questions this by using the same prompt again and again—if an AI were to depict itself, what would it look like? How does it inherit and reinforce cultural narratives? I see AI as both a tool and a subject, a mirror reflecting our collective consciousness.

Some argue that AI-generated images should not be considered photography. What’s your response to that debate?

AI-generated images are not photography, but they challenge photography in ways we can’t ignore. The line between AI and photography is blurring and with AI embedded in every photo-capturing and editing tool, the idea of a “straight out of the camera” photograph is nearly obsolete—unless you’re using older equipment.

I see AI images as a distinct medium. They are derivatives of photography, reliant on the immense volume of human-made images, yet fundamentally different. In some ways, AI imagery is closer to painting than photography—it is a constructed, generated image, except instead of a singular human mind creating it, a machine trained on all of human visual culture does.

As for the argument that AI images are “fake,” I challenge the idea that photography ever represented pure truth. I call AI’s version of truth a “statistical truth”—it reflects patterns rather than moments. But what do we mean by “fake”? Does an image need to be tied to a physical event to be meaningful? Can a machine-generated image hold the same emotional weight as a ‘real’ photograph? I’m interested in this tension, not in choosing sides. AI expands the language of photography rather than replacing it.

How do you see the role of AI evolving in photography and visual storytelling in the next decade?

AI is already reshaping visual culture, not just through AI art but also through AI slop—an overwhelming flood of synthetic imagery. As the novelty fades, I believe we will start using AI more thoughtfully. I see potential for new genres, like synthetic documentaries—where AI-generated visuals bring undocumented or lost histories to life. AI will also replace certain types of photography, like stock and commercial work.

But photography is far from dead. On the contrary, its role as a document of reality will become more critical than ever. Photojournalism and documentary photography will carry even greater weight, with photographers serving as witnesses and gatekeepers of ethical practice.

AI is also changing production itself. Work that once required a large team can now be executed by a single person. This raises concerns about job loss in creative industries but also opens new possibilities—giving artists more independence, lowering production costs, and expanding creative freedom. The real challenge is ensuring we remain active participants in shaping AI-driven content rather than passive consumers of it.

Your work has had a great deal of exposure in 2024. Can you tell us about any key moments or achievements that have helped solidify your vision and your path?

2024 has been a pivotal year, full of exhibitions, collaborations, and opportunities to expand my work. Over the past two years, I developed three AI-based projects: In Their Own Image, In the Image of God They Created Them (2022), A Self-Portrait of an Algorithm (2023), and Imagined Images (2023). This past year was about presenting them to the world.

Imagined Images, where I recreated my missing family photo album using AI, gained the most recognition. It reached a wide audience after being featured on WeTransfer and was later covered by BBC Culture, ArtReview, Monocle, Grazia Italia, Beaux Arts Magazine, Fisheye, and more. Exhibition highlights included Missing Mirror at FOAM Amsterdam, Images Vevey festival, Photography Never Lies at BACC Bangkok, and collaborations with König Gallery in Berlin and TAEX for an NFT drop.

Another ongoing collaboration is with OpenAI, where I’m part of the Alpha Team—a vibrant community of pioneering artists. Having early access to beta products and being able to experiment with the latest AI tools has given me a great privilege, and has helped me shape my work and my thinking on these topics. But I feel that as an early adopter of this technology I also have a responsibility to think and use those tools critically, reflect on them and explore the ethical and environmental implications that their use might cause.

When my projects receive recognition and visibility I feel that what I do matters for my audience as much as it matters to me and this reinforced my commitment to explore the impact of emerging technologies on our perception and our society.

Do you have any concepts in mind that you haven’t been able to realize due to AI’s limitations?

AI evolves so fast that my main difficulty is simply keeping up! I do have a lot of things that I want to try out and projects to work on but my main limitation is a very human one, it is time. It’s funny that you asked this question since AI’s limitations have been the subject of my latest work, The Sleight of the Machine. It is a short film created using AI, which draws parallels between AI and magic and turns its distortions into “wonders” in a humorous allegory. The film continues my ongoing exploration of how new imaging technologies shape our perception and influence our relationship with them. Ultimately, the film becomes a self-reflective spectacle, questioning how this new medium is received while simultaneously examining both AI’s power and its limitations.

What do you have planned for 2025?

I can’t say much yet, but one of the events that are coming up and I’m very excited about is a workshop I will be leading in Berlin in early June hosted by Artfotomode. It is addressed to photographers that are looking to incorporate AI in their artistic practice and engage critically with this new medium.

I’m now focusing on promoting my short film and I’m so looking forward to creating more work that expands on the mystical aspects of AI and the correlations to the divine and magical.

Where can we find you online?

You can find my work on my website: www.mariamavropoulou.com

And follow me for the latest updates and insights on Instagram: @mariamavropoulou