ARTIST STATEMENT
90 Miles is an AI reporting-illustration experiment exploring the decades-long story of Cubans crossing the 90 miles of ocean separating Havana from Florida.
Reportage illustration has been used for more than 150 years in journalistic publications to convey moments and narratives, and, in a broader sense, has existed since the dawn of civilization.
For over 25 years, I wanted to document this story but had no meaningful or ethical access to it. I first learned about the crossings while growing up in America, through television and newspapers.
When I later worked in Cuba from 2014–2016, I realized that attempting to photograph the subject could endanger the very people who remained there. There was no safe or responsible way to tell it directly.
The Cubans who attempt the journey are extraordinarily resourceful, building rafts from inner tubes, wood, plastic, and household materials. Their ingenuity, and the circumstances that pushed them to such lengths, stayed with me.
In 2023, when the public gained the ability to collaborate with a collective photographic history to create photorealistic visions of what was, is, or could be, I was inspired to explore this story through the tradition of reportage illustration.
I developed the AI prompts from past conversations with Cubans, from lifelong exposure to the narrative, and through research. The work is based on true stories but is, of course, not real.
The timeline begins after the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the country underwent dramatic political and economic change, and follows events from Fidel Castro’s rise in the late 1950s to the present.
Today, lack of economic opportunity remains a primary motivator for escape. Since 2021, up to two million Cubans—roughly 18% of the island’s population—have left amid the largest exodus since the 1980s.
90 Miles offers a new way to translate complex histories using photographic-looking imagery, connecting people with one of the most enduring human stories of our time. The images are shown exactly as generated, without post-production editing.
Link to AIRLAB, the original page for 90 Miles.
Link to OPENSEA, to see the entire 400 image NFT collection. The 400 image collection includes imagery that is not shown below, and vice versa.
