All the Places I Have Lived v3.0

<p dir="ltr">Originally from Germany I moved to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in my early 20s where I have been working as a commercial and documentary photographer in in recent years follow an academic career. In this work I use my own long term experience as a migrant to reflect on changes in my identity through memories of the nine different neighbourhoods I lived in through the past two decades. <br><br>The overall approach is autoethnographically. The starting point being a return to the places I’ve called home across Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)—neighbourhoods I’ve lived in since arriving in the city in 2004. I revisited these locations and photographed each of them upon my return, building a personal archive that forms the foundation for training a series of custom AI models using DreamBooth in Stable Diffusion. Rather than simply reconstructing what once was, my aim was to evoke how these places live on in memory, and how these memories are distorted over time. The resulting images are shaped as much by feeling as by fact.<br><br>To take this further, I developed a small Python-based tool I call Memory Infuser. It applies glitch-like visual distortions to the AI-generated images, guided by short written texts – my personal memories, tied to each place. Each image produced is singular, responding only to the specific combination of image and memory input. This process weaves together personal photography, machine learning, text, and generative aesthetics. The outcome is intentionally unstable and layered, emotionally charged, and impossible to replicate. These are not just pictures of places, but impressions of how it could have once felt to be there.<br><br>At its heart, this project is a reflection on memory and the concept of home - on how we carry fragments of the past with us, and how those fragments shape who we think we are. It’s less about documenting a place and more about trying to capture the emotional traces it leaves behind. Using digital tools, I’ve tried to reimagine these traces - not as exact replicas of experience, but as visual echoes that blur the line between memory and invention. The work asks how identity shifts over time, and how technologies - especially those powered by algorithms—might influence the way we remember or even rewrite parts of ourselves. I’m interested in that tension: between what we hold onto and what gets distorted in the process. I hope the artwork evokes in the viewers an association with their own memories and the questions on what is real and what is not.<br><br>The final piece is made up of digital images generated with Stable Diffusion, trained on photographs I’ve taken in different parts of Saigon. To disrupt and reshape these AI-generated scenes, a small Python-based tool called Memory Infuser is used to distort the images, using fragments of written memory as input - so each image is shaped by both code and personal experience. By combining photography, generative AI, and written text, I was able to create a process that feels layered and unpredictable. The glitch effects are not just visual noise - they echo the way memory changes over time, how emotion can tint what we recall. These images don’t aim for accuracy. They reflect how a place felt, not how it looked. I chose these tools and techniques because they leave room for uncertainty and interpretation. That openness feels essential for a project about identity - something that’s never fixed, always shifting, and deeply affected by where we’ve been and how we remember it.</p>