The face of hunger in a new Feeding America campaign doesn’t have a name. She isn’t even a person.
Her face was created by morphing together, through the use of artificial intelligence, the countenances of 1,000 people who visit food banks across the country.
She telegraphs a contradictory but realistic blend of qualities: Stress and calm, weariness and resolve and, perhaps, regret that in a land of plenty and despite her best efforts, she is hungry.
It makes the viewer pause to sort it all out. And that’s exactly the point.
“We wanted to make it almost impossible to ignore,” says Catherine Davis, chief marketing and communications officer at Feeding America. “We wanted to do it in a way that would jar people.”
When it comes to the hungry, the first image many people conjure up might be malnourished children in faraway countries. When they think of hungry Americans, they might picture the homeless or the unemployed. In fact, according to the largest U.S. hunger nonprofit, more than 50 percent of people served by food banks have jobs.
“You walk by hungry people every day,” says Jeanie Caggiano, executive creative director at Leo Burnett, who worked on the project.