The Face You’re Comparing Yourself To Doesn’t Exist

We scroll through perfection every day. Smooth skin, symmetrical faces, impossible curves. But behind these images lies something far less human — a set of digital instructions written to imitate desire.

What if the “perfect” face you saw online was never real? Facetune Portraits by Gretchen Andrew exposes how algorithms shape our understanding of beauty — and ourselves.

“That ‘perfect’ face you saw online?” Gretchen Andrew asks. “It was designed by an algorithm and doesn’t really exist.”

Her Facetune Portraits series makes that illusion visible. By using the same tools designed to “beautify,” Andrew distorts them until their logic breaks. The result is haunting — fragments of smiles, blurred edges, digital scars. These aren’t portraits of people; they’re portraits of what technology wants us to become.

In an era when identity is constantly optimized, Facetune Portraits reminds us that beauty shaped by machines isn’t aspirational — it’s artificial.