/ 2026 / Fine Art / Digitally Enhanced

• Prize
  Honorable Mention
• Photographer
  Yuping Chen, China
• Date of Photograph
  2026

Luminous Simulacrum is a 1.5-metre-wide, 3-metre-high photographic installation shaped like an enlarged smartphone. From a distance, it appears to show an AI-generated portrait on a glowing screen. Up close, the image reveals pixels, dust, fingerprints and scratches. Composed of 400 close-up photographs of a mobile phone screen, the work examines how AI-generated images enter everyday vision through screens, and how photography can expose their material surface as light, trace and simulacrum.