His aim was to capture a phenomenon called "the uncanny valley," which makes robots seem creepier as they become more humanlike, but when photographer and non-practicing MD Max Aguilera-Hellweg set out to take portraits of androids for his new book Humanoid, he simply couldn't find it. Instead, he found himself smitten by these animate machines. "I didn't experience the valley with any of the robots in any way," he tells Creators. "I felt the opposite."
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Over the past seven years, Aguilera-Hellweg toured the world to catalog androids. Today, the fruits of his labors debut in the form of Humanoid, a hardcover from Blast Books that contains the best of his portraits. As the photographer gained access to some of the most renowned robotics labs around, sometimes spending hours alone photographing a single subject, his initial position of skepticism quickly changed to intimacy. Soon, he began to grant personhood to humanoids.