"Positive Illusions" by Benjamin Freedman

Positive Illusions by Toronto-based artist Benjamin Freedman (*1990, Canada) features CGI-generated works and a video that blend personal memory with collective nostalgia. Drawing from childhood road trips to a summer vacation home, Freedman’s surreal, dreamlike scenes evoke the late 1990s Americana—both familiar and strangely artificial. These simulated images challenge the reliability of memory, asking what is real and what is imagined, and encouraging reflection on the nature of fading impressions.

Freedman’s exploration of memory and artificiality resonates with the evolving role of photography in the digital age. As image creation tools advance, so do the ways we construct and perceive reality. In Positive Illusions, Freedman doesn’t just document the world but recreates it using CGI and digital modeling. His hyper-real, staged environments, "photographed" by a virtual camera, blend traditional photography aesthetics with modern technology, creating an unsettlingly perfect hyper-reality.

This work sparks broader discussions on photography's shift from capturing reality to creating new, simulated worlds. Freedman’s uncanny scenes push the boundaries of photography, illustrating how contemporary artists are redefining what it means to "take" or "make" an image.

Though deeply personal, Freedman’s work also mirrors our increasingly digital lives. The video Jake, co-created with ChatGPT in the game What We Do in the Rapture, moves between natural and domestic settings, addressing digital spaces as extensions of human experience. It raises questions about living in virtual realms and the anxieties around artificial intelligence. Beneath the idyllic, childlike scenes of summer, Positive Illusions probes the tension between reality and illusion, asking how these constructs shape our understanding of the world today and whether positive illusions can help us face future realities.