A Missing Camera

A Missing Camera is a photographic work generated using AI technology, inspired by collected lived experiences and testimonies of individuals caught in the asylum-seeking system in Northern Ireland.

The project ventures into uncharted territory, where momentous moments of people's narratives are analyzed and transformed into visual testimonies. These moments, where a camera was missing to be captured, become an act of reclamation, where the absence of a camera during these pivotal moments paradoxically becomes the catalyst for their artistic representation. The missing camera metaphorically embodies the gaps in documentation and presentation.

At a moment when generative AI is destabilising trust in photographic truth, A Missing Camera reverses the usual question. Rather than asking only whether an image is real, it asks which realities remain unseen because those living them lacked the means, safety, or opportunity to record them. The work does not fill these gaps in the archive; it gives them a provisional and openly constructed form.

A Missing Camera is an artistic element of Weaving the Present, Shaping the Future, a project commissioned by The MAC with artist Khaled Barakeh in response to "At the Table" participatory exhibition, designed by Elaine Forde, the MAC's Creative Learning and Engagement Manager.