Join us on Wednesday 30th April 2025, 15-17:00 at Borough Road Gallery, for a presentation by Amanda Wasielewski entitled “The End of Photography Again: Digital Photography After AI”. All welcome.
This talk addresses the historical and theoretical concerns for the field of photography after the widespread uptake of generative AI tools. AI-generated images enter into the discourse of photography from both a visual/formalist perspective and in terms of the historical discourse in the field. I discuss my recent theoretical research on photography, including my article “Unnatural Images: On AI-Generated Photography” in which I argue that AI-generated images that look like photographs should be considered photographs. AI-generated images are not created ex nihilo but are, instead, derived from vast repositories of photographic training data. They are seamlessly engineered to mimic photographic form and, so, I contend that they enter meaningfully into the history and theory of photography. I also discuss my recently completed monograph Digital Photography After AI, in which I trace resonances between early discourse on digital photography in the 1980s and ’90s and more recent discussion around the spread of photographic images on social media and AI-generated images, highlighting the continuities in digital photographic studies over the past forty years.
Amanda Wasielewski is Associate Senior Lecturer of Digital Humanities and Associate Professor (Docent) of Art History in the Department of ALM (Archives, Libraries, Museums) at Uppsala University. Her research focuses on the use of artificial intelligence tools to study and create art and images. Wasielewski is the author of three monographs including Computational Formalism: Art History and Machine Learning (2023). She is also co-editor of the volume Critical Digital Art History (2024) and has recently published the article “Unnatural Images: On AI-Generated Photographs” (Critical Inquiry, Autumn 2024). Her fourth monograph, Digital Photography After AI is forthcoming in 2026.
Lead image is from the research material of Amanda Wasielewski.