The City of Utropiia

So, granted, this is not actual photography, but rather Ai photography, the aim being to imagine a future that never was.

Utropiia is a retro-futuristic metropolis set in an alternate 1920s world of art deco skyscrapers and intelligent automata, rendered as if photographed by the pioneers of early photography: Eadweard Muybridge, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz.

The images begin with my own photographs. I build black-and-white collages from shots I've taken in cities like Vienna and Paris, sometimes blending in public domain vintage photos to extend the scene. These collages are fed into Midjourney as starting points, with prompts specifying the look of early photographic processes: daguerreotype, albumen print, collodion. The AI generates raw material; the real work happens afterward in Photoshop, where I composite multiple outputs, erase artefacts, add period details like airships, and layer grain textures scanned from old book pages to achieve the worn, atmospheric quality of century-old photographs.

The result sits somewhere between photography, collage, and generative art. More on the process here.

Utropiia has its own website and YouTube channel. Daily images from the city are posted on Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook. Prints and objects are available in the store, and process breakdowns and AI tutorials are on Patreon.

From cityscapes to the Natural History Museum, airships to Utropiian fashion, there is much to explore.