Test of Time: Cursed by Charlie Engman
To celebrate Foam’s 25th anniversary, Foam Magazine’s latest issue Test of Time features a special section in which some of the most esteemed thought-makers in the photography world were invited to choose one image they think will stand the test of time and why.
Charlie Engman’s Cursed explores the rapidly evolving and highly contentious field of AI image making. His pictures illuminate how machine intelligence scrapes the deep internet and mirrors back to us the weird, warped and uncomfortable ways humans see and exist through images. While these uncanny yet mystical visions conjured with and from the machine are often overshadowed by the prevailing discourse around AI as it pertains to value, provenance and economics, Engman's work is a provocation to stand back and confront the shifting dynamics of technology and how our collective activity continually shapes them.
Engman's work is also emblematic of a bigger shift in our relationship with images and how they function in society—one we can feel the tremors of now but may only fully understand in retrospect. We live between two image worlds: the one we think we know and the one that actually exists. The former was orgainsed by truth, fact and information—a society built upon the premise of image-as-evidence. The new image world, catalysed by AI’s unsettling ability to conjure realness untethered from reality, operates differently. What we understand an image to be is becoming completely reimagined: a compelling image matters more than any indexical truth, and it has the power to usher in new realities.
This feature was published in Foam Magazine 67, Test of Time, in 2025. To read the full magazine, order FM#67
About the artist
CHARLIE ENGMAN is a Brooklyn-based artist, photographer, educator, and art director for the sustainable fashion brand Collina Strada. His multidisciplinary practice explores the social and emotional dimensions of imagery, hyper-visibility, and the body as a site of mediation between self and otherness. Engman’s recent work incorporates generative AI to examine how disembodied technologies reshape visual identity, representation, and cultural production, offering critical insights into the evolving intersections of labor, capital, and creativity. He is the author of three books: MOM (2020), ; Hello Chaos: A Love Story – The Disorder of Seeing and Being Seen (2024); and Cursed (2024). Alongside his artistic work, Engman operates commercially within the fashion industry, using image-making to interrogate advertising’s role in shaping social space and selfhood.
About the author
GEM FLETCHER is a writer and podcaster. Her work has been published in the British Journal of Photography, Aperture, Dazed, It’s Nice That and An0ther, and she has written catalogue texts for Rhiannon Adam, Juan Brenner, Maggie Shannon and Flora Hanitijo, amongst others. In 2019, Gem launched the Messy Truth podcast, a series of candid conversations that unpack the future of visual culture and what it means to be a photographer today. Guests include Antwaun Sargent, Catherine Opie, Farah Al Qasimi, Carmen Winant, Paul Kooiker, Quil Lemons, Brea Souders and Laia Abril.
From the series Cursed, 2024, by Charlie Engman. Courtesy of the artist