“Privacy Portraits, presented in London this past July by the artist duo Operator (Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti), plays with this desire to be represented differently online, using analog means rather than digital one. Those who wanted to collect the work had to visit the space in person. After providing wallet details, a collector would be assigned two random words, so that the artists could identify them without taking their name. Then collectors were taken through the performance space, and their portrait shot by Catherine, on Polaroid. Collectors were asked to think about something they would like to keep private during the shoot. Ti then manually disfigured these photographs in a process determined by rolling dice. The first number rolled determined the number of rolls to be completed, and each subsequent number designated a way to alter the image: burning or bleaching it, for example, or adding glass and rescanning it. The pair describe this method of portrait-making as algorithmic—using “crypto back-end mechanisms,” but in an organic, physical way. The distorted originals were scanned and either permanently destroyed or kept by the artists—collector’s choice.”
