not your savior
ver. 1.0
What does it mean to idolize someone we’ve never met?
*Not Your Savior* explores the complex relationship between celebrity, image, and collective perception.
Using a custom-built web crawler, I collected images of individuals most frequently searched online within a given category. These faces—instantly recognizable yet personally distant—represent the shifting landscape of cultural attention.
"I am not your savior"
This text disrupts the passive consumption of these figures as icons, encouraging viewers to question the narratives of influence, aspiration, and authority we project onto strangers.
Are these individuals heroes? Villains? Inspirations? Projections of our own fears and desires? The piece challenges us to reconsider the boundaries between admiration, obsession, and the constructed mythologies surrounding public figures.
Not Your Savior began with curiosity: Who are the most popular public figures, and why? I wrote a web crawler programmed to use public search trends and retrieve images of figures who dominate the information landscape. From politicians to influencers, actors to faith leaders, these individuals became visual anchors for an abstract concept: the spectrum of cultural significance.
The retrieved images were layered with text. The phrase "I am not your savior" was chosen for its simplicity and weight; a statement that both invites and resists interpretation.
The images are presented in constant motion, mirroring the nature of internet fame and the relentless cycle of attention.
