Faces of the Republican Party

Americans have lost confidence in their government. We no longer trust our politicians to solve our country’s problems. We are at war over cultural issues while they ignore our basic needs. “Faces of the Republican Party” is not a partisan series of portraits. The people depicted are the partisans. They deserve to be taken to task for their unwillingness to compromise, belief in conspiracy theories, and putting their careers ahead of the needs of Americans. To create these portraits, I collage parts from various photographs. I manipulate their expressions using Photoshop. My knowledge of anatomy is essential. I experiment with color, layer effects, displacement patterns, and moving pixels around to create the final result. I know what I want to convey, but I never know beforehand how I will get there. Intrigued with the possibilities of AI, I have just started to experiment with it as a tool. All the images I’ve submitted, except one, have been done entirely in Photoshop. I’m not interested in creating images entirely with AI. Instead, I’m interested in using it as another way to create subtle effects in the image. Then I manipulate the result again using traditional means.