Medya Sanatçısı, Yayıncı / Media Artist, Publisher
ALMANYA / GERMANY
muellerpohle.net
equivalence.com
mail@equivalence.com
Andreas Müller-Pohle, Berlin'de yaşayan bir medya sanatçısı ve yayıncıdır. Uluslararası çağdaş fotoğrafçılık, yeni medya ve yapay zekâ alanlarında yayın yapan ve bu yıl 45. yılını kutlayan bağımsız sanat dergisi European Photography'nin kurucusudur. Medya filozofu Vilém Flusser'in, ufuk açıcı Fotoğraf Felsefesi de dahil olmak üzere, başlıca eserlerinin editörlüğünü yapmıştır. Pek çok yayın yapan, sergilere katılan Andreas’ın fotoğraf, video ve bilgisayar çalışmaları, dünya çapında, çok sayıda özel koleksiyonda ve müzede yer almaktadır. Avrupa, Kuzey ve Güney Amerika ile Asya'da çok sayıda kurumda, konuk profesör ve öğretim görevlisi olarak bulunmuştur. Şimdilerde, teorik ve pratik odağı fotoğrafçılık ve yapay zekânın kesişimi üzerinedir.
Doğal olandan yapay zekâya geçiş, merkezinde fotoğrafçılığın yer aldığı, derin bir teknolojik ve kültürel değişime işaret ediyor. Yapay zekâdaki, özellikle de görüntü üretimindeki hızlı ilerlemeler, yerleşik yazarlık ve gerçeklik kavramlarına meydan okuyor. Işığın yakalanmasına dayanan geleneksel fotoğrafçılık, veri ve algoritmalardan türetilen yapay zekâ görüntüleriyle zora sokuluyor. Bu değişim, fotoğrafın, güvenilirliğin kalesi olarak oynadığı tarihsel rolü zayıflatıyor ve olasılığı, gerçekliğin yerine koyuyor. YZ tarafından üretilen görüntüler, çoğaldıkça, bilim ve demokratik toplum için önemli etkileri olan hem estetik hem de politik zevksizliği teşvik ediyor. Ucu bucağı olmayan karmaşıklıklarından ötürü YZ sistemleri “süper kara kutular” olarak işlev görmekte, etik ve yasal hesap verebilirliği zorlaştırmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, özgün fotoğraf makinesi görüntüsü yeni bir önem kazanıyor. Sanatçılar, yeni teknolojileri yalnızca bir araç olarak benimsemek yerine, onları eleştirel bir gözle inceleyen kavramsal stratejilerle yanıt veriyorlar.
Yapay Zekâ, Görüntü, Üretilen Görüntüler, Etik, Yasal.
The transition from natural to artificial intelligence marks a profound technological and cultural shift, with photography at its core. Rapid advances in AI, particularly in image generation, are challenging established notions of authorship and truth. Traditional photography, based on the capture of light, is being challenged by AI-generated images derived from data and algorithms. This shift undermines photography’s historical role as a bastion of credibility, replacing truth with probability. As AI-generated images proliferate, they foster both aesthetic and political kitsch, with significant implications for science and democratic society. Due to their immense complexity, AI systems function as “super black boxes,” complicating ethical and legal accountability. In this context, the authentic camera image takes on a new significance. Artists are responding with conceptual strategies that critically examine the new technologies, rather than simply adopting them as tools.
Artificially Intelligent, Image, Generated Images, Ethical, Legal.
The greatest transformation of our time is that from natural to artificial intelligence, an epochal process at the center of which is a medium as familiar as it is trustworthy: photography.
It was a stark warning with which the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit research institution based in San Francisco, startled the public: The danger of “extinction from artificial intelligence” should be given the same global priority as pandemics or nuclear war. Hundreds of renowned experts signed the declaration, including Geoffrey Hinton, one of the pioneers of deep learning, who had recently ended his long-standing collaboration with Google in order to be able to speak freely about the existential dangers of artificial intelligence. That was in May 2023.
Admonishers and Appeasers
Hinton is one of the most prominent voices warning of the threats posed by a technology that comes in the guise of harmless text and image creations – and yet has the potential to turn upside down just about everything that makes up our Western value system. It is not even necessary to look into the distant future, it is enough to consider the dynamics of the present. And that is confusing enough. Here, the admonishers are confronted by the appeasers, who see it all as hype, a passing wave, or even just a burp of the digital revolution that happened more than three decades ago and should no longer frighten us.
Why should we fear it? Artificial intelligence is already present in almost every device, in every sophisticated software application, and it is hard to imagine any technologically relevant area of society without it. Whether in medical diagnostics, language processing, or industrial robotics, it helps us in our everyday and professional lives – but it is camouflaged, like a virus that spreads insidiously and does not rest until it has complete control of the infected body
The fact that artificial intelligence, whose history dates back to the middle of the last century, is only now coming at us with a vengeance has to do with three main factors: the availability of gigantic amounts of data (big data) as a product of social media, online commerce, and other areas; the rapid increase in hardware performance made possible by new graphics processors and storage technologies; and advances in machine learning, especially deep learning.
Super Black Box
We owe the current exponential development of artificial intelligence first and foremost to advances in self-learning systems – systems that can constantly improve their performance based on their experience and thus accelerate themselves, with incalculable consequences for the controllability of the processes set in motion.
The almost limitless complexity of neural networks and the escalating pace of research that drives them make artificial intelligence a black box of a new quality. Even its prototype, the photographic apparatus, was a camera obscura that could only be understood with technological knowledge. The computer, the next stage, obscured its inner workings in the shadow of codes, ruled solely by its programmers, that new class of literati and scribes. And artificial intelligence? It works, but even its creators no longer fully understand how or why: a super black box.
In many areas, this is irrelevant; in others, such as autonomous driving, it is existential. Decisions about life and death, made in the darkness of a black box – the idea rightly fills us with dread. And this is also the ethical crux of artificial intelligence: Without the penetration of its processes, without its plannability and traceability, effective rules and laws for our protection are unthinkable.
Such rules and laws are being hotly debated in photography, especially in applied photography, and are paradigmatic for a multitude of professions whose ground is being pulled out from under them by the new potentials of artificial intelligence. In the crosshairs is a profession whose expertise, the production of camera images, will foreseeably no longer be needed in many commercial applications, and whose capital, the image and author rights, will melt away in the blink of an eye.
Simulated Photography
Two worlds of images confront each other: on the one hand, photography by means of a camera, on the other, image generation by means of a computer; here the image of light, there the image of data. They are two of the most unequal siblings. For those data that are now being devoured and digested by the algorithms of artificial intelligence are the estimated more than twelve trillion photographs (plus all other types of images) that have accumulated in the memory of history and are available there as a sedimented mass of data.
The new, artificially intelligent image is so different that we can no longer call it “photography.” The photograph as we know it, whether analog or digital, whether taken with a camera or a smartphone, is the product of a captured light event, an optical imprint of the external world based on the sensory perception of a human actor and his or her direct, primary, authentic relationship to it. Photographs are two-dimensional slices of a four-dimensional space-time; they are per se analytical.
In contrast, the artificially intelligent image is the product of neural algorithms and statistically processed data. Its relationship to the external world is indirect, secondary, derivative. It can simulate but not embody photography: an image based on the mental input from a human actor and his or her staged relationship to the world. Artificially intelligent images are two-dimensional montages of data from other two-dimensional surfaces; they are per se synthetic.
A new vocabulary has not yet been established. Adding attributes such as intelligent, generated, or algorithmic to photography leads to a dead end, because even a correct attribute cannot save a false noun. “Synthography” and “promptography” have been suggested as alternatives; let us wait and see which one will prevail in the end.
The transition from the light image to the data image is accompanied by the abolition of the author – once again, and this time for good. For if every new image is a composite of already existing images, then every one of its creators becomes a potential author – even if only infinitesimally, even if homeopathically diluted like a drop of blood in the ocean.
Truth and Probability
The visual world of artificial intelligence marks a qualitatively new stage of digitization. From the very beginning of this process in the 1990s, it was clear that photography would play a key role.
The most far-reaching social consequence is the decline of truth, the bastion that photography once built eye to eye and hand in hand with the natural sciences. It was photography that, for more than a century and a half, conditioned us to trust the eye. All our skepticism, all our theoretical insights into the artificial, constructed, staged character of the photographic image have not been able to destroy the idea that the camera is a truth machine that provides us with reliable and trustworthy documents and evidence.
This naïve belief in truth was shattered with the digitization of photography. The analog threads that had once connected photography to the world out there were chopped up into bits and could now be reassembled, computed, at will. Truth was no longer an automatic, technically guaranteed feature of the image, but became a question of journalistic integrity – of certain media, agencies, and individuals with impeccable reputations.
From then on, a new social calculation was required, one that replaced truth with probability, and that today, in the face of artificial intelligence, confronts us with entirely new challenges. For once photography as we know it is eroded, once it is marginalized and pulverized, once our image of the world is distorted by more and more invented, fictitious, mendacious constructs, even liberal civilization comes under threat. Its cohesion is based on a double consensus: the credibility of images and the credibility of science. When the credibility of images fails, science suffers as well, as we are experiencing with the climate crisis: Only since the images of droughts, floods, and melting glaciers have come into existence, does it exist at all.
Artificially intelligent images are – to repeat – not photographs. They can pretend to be photographs, just as photographs once pretended to be reality. This is a qualitative leap that not only justifies but requires us to speak of something revolutionarily new.
Aesthetic and Political Kitsch
A look into the sites and channels of artificially intelligent images makes one shudder at times. It hisses and bubbles like in a witch’s kitchen. Creepy monster figures next to athletic super-bodies, horses running through living rooms, dogs as big as elephants . . . an endless stream of kitsch and nonsense, perfectly styled and yet so uniform and redundant that one wonders where exactly the much-vaunted expansion of photographic creativity is to be found. At the moment, you have to look for it like a needle in a haystack. For the kitschification of the image sphere results almost inevitably from the amalgamated nature of artificial intelligence, which – this seems to be its paradox – produces above all artificial stupidity with all its empty and used images.
The counterpart to aesthetic kitsch is political kitsch, which gelatinizes and reshapes social discourse, to be found in the ideological bunkers, the bubbles and echo chambers in which hallucinated, alternative, freely invented realities circulate. It may seem unrelated at first glance, but both forms of kitsch have a common – if not sole – cause: the decay of certainty and truth in their original and elementary sense as a correspondence between statement and reality, as established theoretically abstract by the sciences and sensually concrete by the technical image media.
Knowledge Regression
Aesthetic and political kitsch – that sounds harmless, and yet it is the swamp from which even the most liberal and democratic societies are threatened. A society without a compass, without an anchor, is easily lost. “Muddying the water” is the term for the strategy of undermining certainties, sowing doubt, and making lies acceptable. Artificially intelligent images that pretend to be photographs are the instrument of choice for this. For they are ideally suited to exploit and abuse our traditional trust in photography – and even more so in the moving image. And we are, it must be emphasized, only at the beginning of this process. The still prevailing imperfection of artificial images, be it the Pope in a down coat or Trump in a scuffle with policemen, will soon be a thing of the past. The great pictorial horror is yet to come.
A peculiar nostalgia is already spreading, a longing for the happy days when we believed we could trust the evidential value of the photograph. And indeed, for all the fascination with the artificial new intelligence, there is one thing worth defending: the authentic camera image, created in the light of reality. Technical approaches to this already exist, such as the Content Authenticity Initiative, which aims to provide photos, videos, and audio recordings with tamper-proof metadata about their origin and processing.
Yet it seems that the debate about photography and its relationship to reality, so fiercely fought over the past few decades, has been increasingly lost from view. Its ontological status, until recently classified as subjective and programmed, appears to have shifted back into a zone of seemingly objective authenticity in the face of the artificially intelligent image. Data can lie, light cannot? That would be a fatal conclusion. Let us be immune to such recursions, which throw us back into the debates of yesterday and the day before.
Artistic Strategies
The aesthetic history of photography can be seen as a reflection of its technological development: Technical innovations have always opened up new artistic creative spaces, and the more significant the innovation, the more powerful the subsequent creative expansion. It is still too early to sketch out an adequate scenario for the immense upheavals of artificial intelligence, but some approaches and strategies can be named for how artists are meeting the challenge today.
Above all, they resist the temptation to use it as a mere toy, to play naïvely with it instead of against it. To let it spew its kitsch unfiltered. Instead, they develop narratives and concepts in which reflection and critique resonate. Their perspective is a theoretical one, a meta-view.
The most promising approaches we see here often bear a striking resemblance to those of conceptual and appropriation art. For today’s digital avant-garde, everything is up for grabs again: history, the media, science and politics, philosophy and art. No dogma or knowledge, no matter how ironclad, remains untouched by them.
But the new artificial intelligence strategies will not only rewrite the past and illuminate the present, they will above all cut a swath into the future, providing forecasts, models, symbols for tomorrow’s life and survival. They will be integrated strategies in which the circles of art intersect with those of the natural sciences and humanities, architecture and urban planning, ecology and many other fields. A cross-media art, an art of interfaces, where the still image becomes a function of the moving one and an element of the expanded immersive space.
It will be up to us to counter the threatening potential of artificial intelligence and instead develop it into an instrument of cognition and sensibility. The intelligence we need for this is and will remain our own. For the artificially intelligent images of the future will only make sense if they remain human images.
© Andreas Müller-Pohle; Berlin, October 2023
Andreas Müller-Pohle is a Berlin-based media artist and publisher. He is the founder of European Photography, an independent art magazine for international contemporary photography, new media and artificial intelligence, which celebrates its 45th anniversary this year. He has edited the major works of media philosopher Vilém Flusser, including the seminal Philosophy of Photography. Andreas has published and exhibited extensively, and his photographic, video, and computer works are in numerous private and museum collections worldwide. He has been a visiting professor and lecturer at numerous institutions in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. His current theoretical and practical focus is on the intersection of photography and artificial intelligence. –
_muellerpohle.net, equivalence.com
Sanat Tarihçisi, Küratör / Art Historian, Curator
FRANSA / FRANCE
veronique.souben@ensp-arles.fr
Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Üniversitesi ve Almanya'nın Münster kentindeki Wilhelm Üniversitesinden dereceleri olan sanat tarihçisi Véronique Souben, 2003 yılında Almanya'daki MARTa Herford Çağdaş Sanat ve Tasarım Müzesi'nde sergilerden sorumlu küratör olmadan önce, Fransa ve Almanya'daki çeşitli kamu kurumlarında (Centre Pompidou, Berlin'deki Neue National Galerie, Centre d'art de Meymac gibi) çalıştı.
2011 Yılında, Fonds régional d'art contemporain Normandie Rouen'in direktörlüğünü üstlendi; burada, on yılı aşkın bir süre fotoğraf alanında aktif bir politika izleyerek Gilles Saussier ve Isabelle Le Minh gibi ulusal üne sahip sanatçıların monografik sergileri ile Geert Goiris, Anne Collier ve Darren Almond'un uluslararası sergilerini düzenledi. Ayrıca 2013'de “Fotoğraf Öğretimi” ve 2021'de “Fotoğraf ve Soyutlama Testi” gibi önemli tematik sergilerin yanı sıra, uluslararası konferanslar ve yayınlar tasarladı.
Ekim 2024'te, Ecole nationale supérieure de la photographie d'Arles'ın başına atanarak, bir yandan okulu yeni teknolojilere açarken, bir yandan da temellerindeki mecranın özgüllüğünü yeniden teyit etti. Ayrıca daha açık bir şekilde deneysel, disiplinler arası ve merkezi olmayan yaklaşımlar geliştirmektedir.
1982'de kurulduğundan bu yana, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d'Arles, mecradaki birçok değişikliğe sürekli olarak uyum sağlamıştır. 90'larda dijital fotoğrafçılığa geçiş, fotoğrafçılığa daha disiplinler arası bir yaklaşım getirirken, teknolojik devrim şimdi bizi hem görüntüleri nasıl ürettiğimiz hem de gerçeklikle nasıl ilişki kurduğumuz açısından mecra hakkında farklı düşünmeye zorluyor. Okulun direktörü olarak Véronique Souben bu değişiklikleri inceleyecek. Fotoğrafçılık alanındaki bu teknolojik değişimin ortaya çıkardığı yeni zorluklar karşısında okulun konumunu açıklayacak.
İletişim, Dijital Fotoğrafçılık, Teknolojik Devrim.
Since it was founded in 1982, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles has constantly adapted to the many changes in the medium. While the transition to digital photography in the 90s led to a more cross-disciplinary approach to photography, the technological revolution is now forcing us to think differently about the medium, both in terms of how we produce images and how we relate to reality. As director of the school, Véronique Souben will review these changes. She will explain the school's position in the face of the new challenges posed by this technological shift in the field of photography.
Communication, Digital Photography, Technological Revolution.
Art historian with degrees from the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and the Wilhelm-Universität in Münster in Germany, Véronique Souben worked in a number of public institutions in France and Germany (Centre Pompidou, Neue NationalGalerie in Berlin, Centre d'art de Meymac, etc.) before becoming curator in charge of exhibitions at the MARTa Herford Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Germany in 2003.
In 2011, she became director of the Fonds régional d'art contemporain Normandie Rouen, where, for over ten years, she has pursued an active policy in the field of photography, with monographic exhibitions by artists of national renown such as Gilles Saussier and Isabelle Le Minh, and international exhibitions by Geert Goiris, Anne Collier and Darren Almond. She has also designed major thematic exhibitions such as ‘Teaching Photography’ in 2013 and ‘Photography and the Test of Abstraction’ in 2021, as well as international conferences and publications.
Appointed head of the Ecole nationale supérieure de la photographie d'Arles in October 2024, she reaffirmed the specificity of the medium in its foundations, while opening the school up to new technologies. She is also developing more openly experimental, cross-disciplinary and decentralised approaches.
Bağımsız Küratör, Sanatçı / Kültür Danışmanı, Fotoğraf Uzmanı / Independent Curator, Artist, Cultural Advisor, Photography Specialist
YUNANİSTAN / GREECE
LinkedIn
vangelisioakimidis@gmail.com
Vangelis Ioakimidis (d. 1962) küratör, kültür mühendisliği danışmanı ve fotoğraf uzmanıdır. Bugüne kadar 20'den fazla ülkede 300'den fazla sergi, yayın ve festival düzenlemiş, 100'den fazla kurum ve görsel sanatçıyla işbirliği yapmıştır.
Fotoğraf kitabı ödülleri, yarışmalar ve bienal komiteleri için jüri üyeliği; Yunanistan'daki Prix Pictet için koordinatörlük; portföy hakemliği; konferans, seminer ve yuvarlak masa tartışmalarında konuşmacı olmak üzere 200'den fazla etkinlikte çeşitli görevler üstlendi. Ayrıca ulusal fotoğraf komitelerinde görev yapmış ve altyapı, dijitalleştirme, yayıncılık, eğitim ve kültürel programlara odaklanan 25 Avrupa projesini yönetmiştir.
Skopelos Fotoğraf Merkezi'nin sanat direktörlüğü ve Atina 2004 Olimpiyat Oyunları fotoğraf küratörlüğü görevlerinin ardından, 2005-2015 yılları arasında Selanik Fotoğraf Müzesi ve PhotoBiennale'nin direktörlüğünü yürütmüştür. Ayrıca (1997-1998) Nice'deki Septembre de la Photographie'de Yunanistan Kültür Bakanlığı Genel Komiseri ve Toulouse'daki Château d'Eau Fotoğraf Merkezi'nde Yunan Yılı (1999-2000) küratörü olarak görevlendirildi.
1984-1996 yılları arasında Éditions Contrejour'da çalıştı ve Paris'te Camera International ve Photographies Magazine'e katkıda bulundu. BOZAR, Les Rencontres d'Arles, PhotoEspaña, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Benaki Müzesi, Kiklad Sanatı Müzesi ve Avrupa'daki diğer kültürel kuruluşlar gibi önemli kurumlarla işbirliği yaptı.
2022 yılında Fransız Kültür Bakanlığı tarafından Sanat ve Edebiyat Nişanı Şövalyesi unvanına layık görüldü.
Paris VIII Üniversitesi'nde Sinema ve Görsel-İşitsel Sanatlar eğitimi aldı ve Fotoğrafçılık dalında uzmanlaştı. Ayrıca; Nanterre Léonard de Vinci Üniversitesi'nde Kültür Ekonomisi ve Aegean Üniversitesi'nde Kültürel Bilgi Teknolojileri eğitimi aldı.
Bu sunumda, dünyamızın karmaşıklığı henüz yeterince anlaşılmamışken bile, her zaman farklı gerçeklikleri keşfetmek ve dolayısıyla görmek istediğimizi kısaca göstereceğim. Fotoğrafik araç, dünyayı ve dünyaları kavrayışımızı elbette şekillendiriyor, ancak her şeyden önce, icat etme ve yeniden şekillendirme arzumuzun bir taşıyıcısı.
Görmek istediğimiz gerçeklikler değerlerimiz, özlemlerimiz ve tüm karmaşıklığıyla dünyayla ilişki kurma isteğimiz tarafından şekillendirilir. Fotoğraf bu arzuları bize geri yansıtır, bizi sorgulamaya, empati kurmaya ve hayal etmeye davet eder. Fotoğrafın mekanik bir araçtan çok yönlü bir mecraya evrimi, gerçekliği anlama ve onunla ilişki kurma biçimimizdeki daha geniş değişimleri yansıtıyor. Yapay zeka tarafından üretilen görüntülerden aşırı görsel yüklemeye kadar dijital çağın zorluklarıyla boğuşurken, fotoğrafın yaratıcılık, bağlantı ve değişim için sunduğu fırsatların da farkına varmalıyız.
Yapay Zekâ (YZ), Aşırı Görsel Yük, Görsel Okuryazarlık, Hipergerçeklik.
In this presentation, I will briefly show that we have always wanted to explore and consequently see different realities, even when the complexity of our world was still understated. The photographic medium, by all means, shapes our understanding of the world and worlds, but foremost, it is a carrier of our desire to invent and reshape.
The realities we want to see are shaped by our values, our aspirations, and our willingness to engage with the world in all its complexity. Photography reflects these desires back to us, inviting us to question, to empathize, and to imagine.
Photography’s evolution from a mechanical tool to a multifaceted medium reflects broader shifts in how we understand and engage with reality. As we grapple with the challenges of the digital age-from AI-generated imagery to visual overload-we must also recognize the opportunities photography offers for creativity, connection, and change.
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Visual Overload, Visual Literacy, Hyperreality.
Since its invention in the 19th century, photography has oscillated between truth and fiction, documentation and imagination. Initially celebrated for its ability to capture reality with mechanical precision, it has continuously evolved, redefining its relationship with painting, visual culture, and technology while also shaping our approach to the world—or rather, the worlds we live in. In this presentation, I will briefly show that we have always wanted to explore and consequently see different realities, even when the complexity of our world was still understated. The photographic medium, by all means, shapes our understanding of the world and worlds, but foremost, it is a carrier of our desire to invent and reshape.
As theorists such as Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag have argued, photography has never been a neutral reflection of reality but rather a constructed form of representation, shaped by framing, selection, and context. This is even more relevant in the digital age, where image manipulation and artificial intelligence (AI) have further advanced our relationship with the image. Photography, once seen as a tool for capturing objective truth, has become a medium for constructing subjective realities, blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
Before the advent of photography, painting was the dominant visual medium for capturing and interpreting the world. However, the invention of photography in the 19th century challenged painting’s role as a documentary tool, leading some artists to fear its replacement. The painter Paul Delaroche famously declared, “From today, painting is dead.” Instead of replacing painting, photography transformed it, inspiring movements like Impressionism, Surrealism, and Cubism—movements that embraced subjectivity and abstraction rather than mimetic representation. In that light, rather than embracing photography’s mechanical precision, the Pictorialist movement (late 19th to early 20th century) sought to elevate photography to the status of fine art. Figures like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen experimented with soft focus, alternative printing techniques, and staged compositions to create images that resembled paintings. This long-standing relationship between the two media, instead of just being interpreted as antagonistic in terms of resemblance, could also be understood as a competing relationship in terms of reshaping the eidolon.
This was followed by another approach a bit later, with French humanist photography of the mid-20th century, which focused on daily life, social interaction, and emotion.
Now the focus was on different time scales, reshaping the eidolon by swiftly reacting, as it were, to some of its aspects: Robert Doisneau (Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville, (1950) captured spontaneous, romanticized moments of Parisian life; Willy Ronis, with works such as Le Petit Parisien (1952), emphasized working-class dignity in post-war France, while Édouard Boubat sought timeless beauty, focusing on nostalgia and universal themes. But as stated above, there are many realities in different parts of the world forming our glance. While French humanists celebrated tenderness and optimism, Robert Frank, at the other end of the ocean, with The Americans (1958), took a harsher, more fragmented approach, rejecting aestheticized compositions in favor of raw, unfiltered social critique. His work exposed the contradictions of American life—poverty alongside wealth, alienation within modernity—and laid the foundation for a whole school of photography aspiring to make engaging images; realities that we inhabited but perhaps turned away from.
Yet our desire to see realities also comes from introducing different visual strategies heavily leaning on fiction and staged composition. There is Sophie Calle (Suite Vénitienne, 1980), who blurs the line between documentation and performance, questioning surveillance and voyeurism; Cindy Sherman (Untitled Film Stills, 1977-1980), constructing fictional female archetypes, exposing photography’s role in identity construction; Arthur Tress (Dream Collector, 1970-1974), translating children’s nightmares into surreal compositions, proving photography can document psychological states; Nan Goldin (The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, 1986), merging documentary and performance, capturing raw, intimate realities of love, addiction, and violence; and Duane Michals (The Spirit Leaves the Body, 1968), challenging the limitations of single-frame photography, using sequential storytelling to suggest metaphysical themes.
There is a lot, and there is even so much more. But what I am trying to underline is our desire to see realities and our understanding of how image makers intervene, manipulate, and construct this relationship with the image. And, of course, on the other end, how people receive it and how we might claim that we want to see different realities but, for various reasons, are unable to. In this framework, one cannot omit our changing position toward images that used to shape public opinion, often influencing political action.
For example Nick Ut’s seminal image of the Napalm Girl (1972) helped shift public opinion against the Vietnam War, demonstrating photography’s power to influence global sentiment. That was in the 1970s. And still, a couple of decades later, the world was struck by Kevin Carter’s The Vulture and the Little Girl (1993). The picture became a symbol of famine, raising ethical debates about whether photographers should document or intervene. But what happened when Alan Kurdi (2015) took a picture of the drowned Syrian child? Even though engraved in our memory as a tragic image, it has become one of a trillion tragic images circulating in the media, condemned to disappear through its duplication. It all becomes part of the information out there—a cold reality detached from us. The aura of the images is eroded.
Jean Baudrillard had foreseen this decades ago, but it seems that now his theory of simulacra and hyperreality provides a fitting framework for understanding photography’s transformation in the AI era. Baudrillard argued that in contemporary society, images no longer represent reality but rather simulations of reality, leading us to live in a state of hyperreality, where representations exist without a stable reference to an external truth.
AI systems like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion synthesize the world, drawing on vast datasets of past images to generate convincing yet entirely fictitious visuals. These images exist within Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality, where the line between authenticity and fabrication becomes increasingly blurred. As we move further into an era where images are increasingly autonomously generated, our relationship to visual culture, memory, and evidence must be critically examined. Photography is actively constructing new realities. As we stand at the intersection of technological advancement and artistic innovation, it is essential to reflect on the realities we choose to create, consume, and believe in. As the medium becomes more accessible through smartphones and social media, the line between creator and consumer has blurred. Everyone with a camera can now contribute to the visual narrative of our world, but this democratization comes with challenges. The sheer volume of images produced daily-estimated in the billions-has led to what some theorists call "visual overload." In this flood of imagery, meaningful photographs risk being drowned out by the noise of trivial or manipulated content. The ethical responsibility of photographers, therefore, extends beyond the act of capturing an image; it includes considering how that image will be received and interpreted in a world saturated with visuals. Visual literacy-the ability to critically analyze, contextualize, and question images-is now more crucial than ever.
This means questioning the motives behind a photograph, the context in which it was created, and the ways in which it is disseminated. It also means recognizing the power dynamics at play—who gets to represent whom, and whose stories are left untold. By engaging with photography critically, we can resist the allure of hyperreality and reclaim a sense of agency over the images we consume. At the same time, we must also embrace the imaginative potential of photography. The medium has always been a space for experimentation, for pushing the boundaries of what is possible. From the surreal compositions of Man Ray to the conceptual works of Hiroshi Sugimoto, photography has the power to transport us to alternate realities, challenging our perceptions and expanding our horizons. In the age of AI, this potential is amplified, offering new ways to explore the interplay between reality and fiction. Rather than fearing these developments, we can view them as an opportunity to reimagine the world and our place within it.
Ultimately, the realities we want to see are shaped by our values, our aspirations, and our willingness to engage with the world in all its complexity. Photography reflects these desires back to us, inviting us to question, to empathize, and to imagine. As we move forward, it is up to us to decide what kind of realities we want to create-and what kind of world we want to inhabit. Projects like Sebastião Salgado’s Genesis (2013) demonstrate the medium’s ability to highlight pressing global issues, from environmental degradation to human rights. Such work reminds us that photography, at its best, can bridge divides, foster empathy, and inspire action. However, this potential is contingent on the ethical use of the medium. Photographers must navigate complex moral terrain, balancing the desire to tell compelling stories with the need to respect their subjects’ dignity and agency. What realities do we, as a society, want to prioritize and preserve? This question is not just about photography but about the very essence of how we perceive and interact with the world. Photography, as a medium, will continue to evolve, but its power to shape our understanding of reality will remain as long as we continue to engage with it critically and creatively.
In conclusion, photography’s evolution from a mechanical tool to a multifaceted medium reflects broader shifts in how we understand and engage with reality. As we grapple with the challenges of the digital age-from AI-generated imagery to visual overload-we must also recognize the opportunities photography offers for creativity, connection, and change. By fostering visual literacy and ethical practices, we can ensure that photography continues to serve as a mirror to our world, reflecting both its beauty and its complexities. The realities we choose to see and create through photography will shape not only our understanding of the present but also our vision for the future.
Vangelis Ioakimidis (b. 1962) is a curator, cultural engineering consultant, and photography expert. He has organized more than 300 exhibitions, publications, and festivals in over 20 countries, collaborating with more than 100 institutions and visual artists.
He has held various roles in over 200 events, including jury member for photography book awards, contests, and biennale committees; coordinator for the Prix Pictet in Greece; portfolio reviewer; and speaker at conferences, seminars, and roundtable discussions. He has also served on national photography committees and managed 25 European subprojects focused on infrastructure, digitization, publishing, education, and cultural programs.
From 2005 to 2015, he was the Director of the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography and PhotoBiennale, after serving as the Artistic Director of the Skopelos Photographic Center and Photography Curator for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. He was also appointed (1997-1998) General Commissioner for the Hellenic Ministry of Culture at the Septembre de la Photographie in Nice and curator for the Greek Year (1999–2000) at the Château d’Eau Photography Center in Toulouse.
From 1984 to 1996, he worked at Éditions Contrejour and contributed to Camera International and Photographies Magazine in Paris. He has collaborated with major institutions such as BOZAR, , Les Rencontres d’Arles, PhotoEspaña, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the Benaki Museum, the Museum of Cycladic Art, and other cultural organizations across Europe.
In 2022, he was named Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture.
He studied Cinema and Audiovisual Arts with a specialization in Photography at University Paris VIII, Cultural Economy at Université Léonard de Vinci Nanterre, and Cultural Information Technology at Aegean University.
Fotoğraf Küratörü, Yazar, Öğretim Görevlisi / Photography Curator, Writer, Lecturer
İSVİÇRE / SWITZERLAND
daniel.blochwitz@gmx.net
Daniel Blochwitz, İsviçre merkezli bir fotoğraf küratörü, yazar, öğretim görevlisi ve danışman olup, bu alandaki uzmanlığı ve yenilikçi yaklaşımıyla tanınmaktadır. Almanya'da doğdu (*1973), Amerika Birleşik Devletleri'nde görsel sanatlar ve fotoğrafçılık eğitimi aldı ve 2003 yılında Florida Üniversitesi'nden Alman edebiyatı ve film dalında yüksek lisans derecesi aldı. Aynı yıl, uluslararası bir sanat kolektifinin parçası olarak 50. Venedik Bienali'ne (Utopia Station) katıldı. Daha sonra Whitney Müzesi'nin daveti üzerine Bağımsız Çalışma Programı'na katılmak üzere New York'a taşındı ve Martha Rosler'in sanatçı asistanı olarak çalıştı.
Bu formasyonun ardından, New York'un önde gelen çağdaş sanat galerilerinde on yılı aşkın bir süre geçirdikten sonra Edwynn Houk Gallery'yi yönetmek üzere Zürih'e taşındı. Blochwitz, 2015 yılından bu yana müzeler, galeriler, koleksiyonlar, festivaller ve kapalı mekânlar için kişisel ve karma sergiler düzenleyerek bağımsız küratörlük çalışmalarına odaklanmıştır. Ayrıca Almanca konuşulan dünyada fotoğraf temelli medyaya adanmış ilk ve tek sanat fuarı olan Photo Basel'in sanat direktörlüğünü ve Fotofestival Lenzburg'un son üç edisyonunun küratörlüğünü yaptı. Blochwitz ailesiyle birlikte Zürih'te yaşıyor.
Eğer camera obscura, fotoğrafik görüntüleme evreninin ortaya çıktığı ve 19. yüzyıl icadının genç ama dünyayı şekillendiren kozmosunu ortaya koyduğu Büyük Patlama ise, o zaman, şu anki durumundan ne anlam çıkarıyoruz? Fotoğraf sürekli genişleyen, büyüyen, değişen ve uzmanlaşan geniş bir evren midir?Ama aynı zamanda, ısrarla daha otomatik, yapay ve hesaplamalı hale geliyor –özünde, bir kara kutu. Genişletilmiş bir ortam kavramı, şu anda, içinde yer almayı talep eden her şeyi hala kapsayabilir mi? Günümüzdeki imajların çoğu, fotoğrafın önceki tanımlarına direniyorsa veya yalnızca öyleymiş gibi duruyorsa, farklı şekilde sınıflandırılmaları gerekmez mi?, farklı şekilde sınıflandırılmaları gerekmez mi? Bu gelişmeleri kendi koşullarında keşfetmek varken neden medyumun kabul edilmiş parametrelerini bir kırılma noktasına kadar esnetelim? Yanıt olarak, fotoğrafın sadece evrim geçirmediğini, iki farklı ve birbirinden uzaklaşan dala ayrıldığını öne sürüyorum: biri camera obscura'nın orijinal yörüngesini takip ederken, diğeri “kutuyu” başka bir şeye, artık iç işleyişini açığa vurmayan ama gizleyen ve biçim, anlam ve işlev bakımından aynaya daha çok benzeyen bir cihaza dönüştürüyor. Kayıt düğmesi olan bir ayna.
Kamera Obscura, Otomatik/Yapay/Hesaplamalı Fotoğraf, Genişletilmiş Ortam.
If the camera obscura was the Big Bang from which the universe of photographic imaging unfolded and within which the 19th-century invention manifested its young but worlds-shaping cosmos, then what do we make of its current state? Photography is an already vast universe that continues to expand, grow, change and specialize? But is also insistently becoming more automated, artificial, and computational - essentially a black box. Can an extended concept of the medium still encompass all that now claims a place within it? If many of today’s images resist previous definitions of the photographic or merely pose as such, ought they not be classified differently? Why stretch the medium’s accepted parameters to a breaking point when we could explore these developments on their own terms? By way of response, I propose that photography has not merely evolved but has split—into two distinct and diverging branches: one following the original trajectory of the camera obscura, while the other flattens the 'box' into something else, a device that no longer reveals but conceals its inner workings and—in form, meaning, and function—more closely resembles a mirror. A mirror with a record button.
Camera Obscura, Automated/Artificial/Computational Photography, Expended Medium.
Daniel Blochwitz is a Swiss-based photography curator, author, lecturer, and consultant known for his expertise and innovative approach to the medium. Born in Germany (*1973), he studied visual arts and photography in the United States, earning a Master’s degree from the University of Florida in 2003, with a minor in German Literature and Film. That same year, he participated in the 50th Venice Biennale (Utopia Station) as part of an international art collective. He then moved to New York at the invitation of the Whitney Museum to attend its Independent Study Program, while working as an artist assistant to Martha Rosler.
Following these formative years, he spent over a decade in leading contemporary art galleries in New York before relocating to Zurich to direct the Edwynn Houk Gallery. Since 2015, Blochwitz has focused primarily on independent curatorial work, organizing solo and group exhibitions for museums, galleries, collections, festivals, and off-spaces. He has also served as artistic director of Photo Basel, the first and only art fair in the German-speaking world dedicated to photo-based media, and as curator of the last three editions of Fotofestival Lenzburg. Blochwitz lives with his family in Zurich.
Yazar, Küratör, Müze Müdürü / Writer, Curator, Museum Director
İSVİÇRE / SWITZERLAND
williamewingcurator@gmail.com
William A. Ewing, 50 yıllık kariyerinin yarısını Amerika'da, yarısını da Avrupa'da geçirmiş bir yazar, küratör ve eski müze direktörüdür. Daha önce New York'taki Uluslararası Fotoğraf Merkezi'nde Sergiler Direktörü olarak görev yapan ve ardından Lozan'daki Musée de l'Elysée'nin direktörlüğünü üstlenen Ewing, aralarında New York Modern Sanat Müzesi; Londra'daki Hayward, Saatchi, Serpentine, Barbican ve Photographers Gallery; Paris'teki Centre Pompidou, Jeu de Paume ve Maison de la Photographie; Melbourne'deki Victoria Ulusal Galerisi ve daha birçok müzenin de bulunduğu, dünya çapında yüzlerce müzede sergilerin küratörlüğünü yapmıştır.
Yıllar içinde Thames & Hudson, Steidl, Rizzoli, Actes Sud ve diğer yayınevleriyle aralarında The Body; The Face; Landmark: the Fields of Landscape Photography; Edward Steichen'ın da bulunduğu onlarca kitap yayımladı: Fotoğrafta Yaşamlar; Uygarlık: Şimdi Yaşadığımız Yol; Edward Burtynsky: Essential Elements; ve William Wegman: İnsan Olmak. Danaé Panchaud ile birlikte yazdığı son kitabı Flora Photographica kısa süre önce yayımlandı. William Ewing, birkaç yıl önce, Royal Photographic Society'nin Fotoğrafçılığa Üstün Hizmet Ödülü'ne layık görüldü ve Fransız Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'de Subay oldu. Kendisi İtalya'da bir düşünce kuruluşu olan Todi Circle'ın da direktörüdür.
50 yılı aşkın süredir yüzlerce müze ile iş birliği yapan bir küratör olarak, pragmatik konulara değinmek istiyorum: Biz küratörler kendimizi nasıl eğitiyoruz; değişimi nasıl benimsiyor ya da değişime nasıl direniyoruz ve entelektüel modalardan nasıl etkileniyoruz? Ayrıca, küratör ve fotoğrafçı arasındaki simbiyotik, ama zorunlu olarak çatışmalı ilişkiye de değinmek istiyorum. Dahası, eleştirinin yokluğunu (ya da ölümünü) ve alanımızın, görünür dünyayla ilişkisinden iç gözlemlere yönelmesini tartışmak istiyorum. Zaman yeterli olursa, bir başka ilgi çekici konu da kurumlara (müzeler, üniversiteler, yayınevleri, vb.) olan güvenin aşınması ve yüzeysel (ama, kabul edilmelidir ki göz alıcı) görünümlerin kolayca cezbetmesidir.
Pragmatik Konular, Entelektüel Modalar, Çatışmalı ilişkiler, Eleştiri Eksikliği.
As a working curator who has been collaborating with hundreds of museums over 50 years, I wish to address pragmatic issues: How we curators inform ourselves, how we adopt or resist change, and how we are swayed by intellectual fashions. I would also like to address the symbiotic but necessarily conflictual relationship between the curator and the photographer. Moreover, I would like to discuss the dearth (or death) of criticism, and the turning away of our field from engagement with the visible world to introspection. A further interest, time permitting, is the erosion of trust in institutions (museums, universities, publishing houses, etc.), and the easy seduction of superficial (yet admittedly glamourous) surfaces.
Pragmatic Issues, Intellectual Fashions, Conflictual Relationships, Dearth of Criticism
William A. Ewing is an author, curator, and former museum director, having spent half of his 50-year career in America, and half in Europe. Formerly the Director of Exhibitions at the International Center for Photography, New York, afterwards the Director of the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, he has curated exhibitions seen at hundreds of museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Hayward, the Saatchi, Serpentine, Barbican and Photographers Gallery, London; the Centre Pompidou, Jeu de Paume and Maison de la Photographie, Paris; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and many others.
Over the years he has published dozens of books with Thames & Hudson, Steidl, Rizzoli, Actes Sud and other publishing houses, among them, The Body; The Face; Landmark: The Fields of Landscape Photography; Edward Steichen: Lives in photography; Civilization: The Way We Live Now; Edward Burtynsky: Essential Elements; and William Wegman: Being Human. His most recent book, Flora Photographica, with Danaé Panchaud was recently released. Several years ago, William Ewing was awarded the Royal Photographic Society’s Outstanding Service to Photography Award, and made an Officer in the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He is also Director of the Todi Circle, a think-tank in Italy.
Sanatçı, Yönetmen, Küratör / Artist, Director, Curator
AZERBAYCAN / AZERBAIJAN
farah.a@yarat.az
Farah Alakbarli, küratör ve 2011 yılında sanatçı Aida Mahmudova tarafından kurulan ve kâr amacı gütmeyen, sanat kurumu YARAT Contemporary Art Space'in (Bakü, Azerbaycan) yöneticisidir. Hem yerel hem de uluslararası sanatçıların yer aldığı çok sayıda serginin yanı sıra, ülke çapında turneye çıkan festival projeleri düzenlemiştir.
Küratöryel pratiği, çağdaş sanat aracılığıyla eleştirel diyaloğu ve katılımı özendirmeye odaklanmaktadır. Sanat tarihi geçmişi ve küratöryel araştırma alanındaki kapsamlı deneyimiyle Azerbaycan'ın, çağdaş sanat ortamının şekillenmesinde önemli bir rol oynamıştır. Kimlik ve toplumsal dönüşümün kesişim noktalarını araştıran çalışmaları, genellikle deneysel formatları, disiplinler arası iş birliklerini ve farklı kuşaklardan sanatçılar arasında diyalog yaratan, yeni medya yaklaşımlarını içeriyor.
Küratörlük kariyerine 2012 yılında başlayan Alakbarli, o tarihten bu yana, çok sayıda önemli serginin küratörlüğünü üstlendi. Son dönemdeki grup sergileri arasında Özgürlük Anıtı (2024), Yedinci Yalnızlık (2023), Tehlike Temizlendi - Mayın Yok (2024) ve Metakod (2023) yer alıyor. Ayrıca Aydan Salahova'nın Sessizliğin Sesleri (2024), Ujal Hagverdiyev'in Varlıkta Konuşma (2022), Rashad Alakbarov'un Look at You! (2021) ve Ashraf Murad'ın Aşk ve Protesto (2018) gibi önemli kişisel sergilerinin küratörlüğünü yapmıştır.
YARAT, çağdaş sanat anlayışını beslemeye ve Kafkasya, Orta Asya ve çevre bölgelerde sanatsal uygulama, araştırma ve düşünce için bir merkez oluşturmaya adanmış, kâr amacı gütmeyen bir kuruluştur. Merkezi Azerbaycan'ın başkenti Bakü'de bulunan YARAT (Anlamı Azerice yaratmak fiilinden gelmektedir), 2011 yılında sanatçı Aida Mahmudova tarafından kurulmuştur. YARAT, misyonunu sergiler, eğitim etkinlikleri ve festivallerden oluşan sürekli bir program aracılığıyla gerçekleştirmektedir.
YARAT, fikir alışverişi için bir platform sunarak ve sanatsal diyaloğu teşvik ederek eğitim ve kamusal etkinlikler için dinamik bir merkez haline gelmiştir. Bu etkinlikler stratejik olarak sergilerin etrafında şekillenerek izleyicilerin çağdaş sanatla ilişkisini derinleştirmektedir.
Konferanslar, panel tartışmaları, küratörlü turlar, çocuklar ve yetişkinler için atölye çalışmaları ve eğitim programları sunan merkez, eleştirel düşünmeyi ve yaratıcılığı teşvik etmektedir. Erişilebilirlik ve kapsayıcılığa olan güçlü bağlılığıyla YARAT'ın eğitim ve kamusal programları, sanatın takdir edilmesini aktif bir şekilde teşvik etmekte ve Azerbaycan'da yeni nesil sanatçıların ve sanatseverlerin gelişimini desteklemektedir. YARAT, bu girişimleriyle kentin kültürel zenginleşmesine katkıda bulunmakta ve bölgenin sanatsal manzarasının şekillenmesinde hayati bir rol oynamaktadır.
YARAT (NGO), Çağdaş Sanat, Aida Mahmudova.
YARAT is a non-profit organization dedicated to nurturing an understanding of contemporary art and creating a hub for artistic practice, research and thinking in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the surrounding region. Based in Baku, Azerbaijan, YARAT (meaning Create in Azerbaijani) was founded by artist Aida Mahmudova in 2011. YARAT realizes its mission through an on-going program of exhibitions, education events and festivals.
YARAT has become a dynamic hub for educational and public events, offering a platform for the exchange of ideas and fostering artistic dialogue. These events are strategically built around the exhibitions, deepening the audience's engagement with contemporary art. By offering educational programs such as lectures, panel discussions, curated tours, workshops for kids and adults and more, the center encourages critical thinking and creativity. With a strong commitment to accessibility and inclusivity, YARAT’s educational and public programming actively promotes art appreciation and supports the development of the next generation of artists and art enthusiasts in Azerbaijan. Through these initiatives, YARAT contributes to the cultural enrichment of the city and plays a vital role in shaping the region's artistic landscape.
YARAT (NGO), Contemporary Art, Aida Mahmudova.
Farah Alakbarli is a curator and the Director of YARAT Contemporary Art Space (Baku, Azerbaijan), a nonprofit art institution founded in 2011 by artist Aida Mahmudova. She has organized numerous exhibitions featuring both local and international artists, as well as festival projects that have toured across the country.
Her curatorial practice focuses on fostering critical dialogue and engagement through contemporary art. With a background in art history and extensive experience in curatorial research, she has played a pivotal role in shaping Azerbaijan’s contemporary art landscape. Her work explores the intersections of identity and social transformation, often incorporating experimental formats, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and new media approaches that create a dialogue between artists of different generations.
Alakbarli began her curatorial career in 2012 and has since curated numerous significant exhibitions. Her recent group exhibitions include Monument to Freedom (2024), The Seventh Solitude (2023), Danger Cleared – No Mines (2024), and Metacode (2023), among others. She has also curated notable solo exhibitions, such as Voices of Silence by Aydan Salahova (2024), Conversation in Presence by Ujal Hagverdiyev (2022), Look at You! by Rashad Alakbarov (2021), and Love and Protest by Ashraf Murad (2018), among others.