As part of our 20th Anniversary celebration, we revisit the inventive practice of Hannah Whitaker, whose work interrogates the aesthetics of a technologically mediated life. At the center of Whitaker’s recent series is Ursula, a fictional persona inspired by archetypes of synthetic women found in literature, film, and contemporary tech culture. Rendered as silhouetted forms, Ursula is all contour and artifice, a cipher whose absence of individuality becomes a sharp critique of a visual culture that flattens women into stylized, consumable images.
Whitaker’s latest works, including Dip, Looping, Ring Light, and Curly Personality, expand her investigation into the interplay between mechanical precision and human imperfection. While their hard-edged geometries and mirrored forms suggest digital manipulation, these photographs are achieved entirely in-camera through an elaborate choreography of reflective props, consumer-grade selfie lights, laser-cut mirrors, and rear projection. This commitment to analog processes foregrounds what Whitaker calls the “inevitable failures of perfection”-the flyaway hairs, dust particles, and surface scratches that puncture the illusion of a frictionless, hyper-designed world.
In oscillating between the sleek language of technology and the unruly presence of the handmade, Whitaker reminds us that even in our most synthetic constructs, human life insists on showing through.