Roope Rainisto

Roope Rainisto is a Finnish artist based in Helsinki. His pictures look like documentary photographs or holiday snapshots, but they come from image models he trains himself, work he describes as post-photography. He got his first camera at 13. He studied information networks at Helsinki University of Technology and then spent about 25 years in design, as a principal designer for Nokia and Microsoft and as co-founder and chief design officer of the VR company Varjo.

He began teaching himself AI image tools around 2021 and won Claire Silver's second AI art contest in 2022 with the video Temporary. His breakthrough came with Life In West America, 500 images of an imagined American West released on BrainDrops in February 2023, which sold out in about a minute. For the series he trained custom models and generated around 35,000 images before choosing the final 500.

REWORLD followed with Fellowship in April 2023, and a print from it, Auto Dream No. 3, entered the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection at Paris Photo that year. Vacation came out in May 2024 alongside a presentation at Photo London. Later that year he released Symbiosis with Mercedes-Benz NXT, training his models on photographs he took at the Mercedes-Benz Museum. Christie's offered The Swimming Hall in Augmented Intelligence, its 2025 sale of AI art.

Museums and galleries have shown his work, including the California Museum of Photography in Riverside and Noorderlicht in Groningen, which included Life In West America in Pixel Perceptions.