ยฉ Raghu Rai
AI and the Proof of Being There
How many today can still tell a street or documentary photograph from its AI-generated version? The honest answer is few, and fewer every year. Facing a Tokyo street at night or a Mumbai alley you need a second look before saying whether it is a shot or a generation. The signs we trained ourselves on have stopped working.
In April 2023 Boris Eldagsen won the Open Creative category at the Sony World Photography Awards with Pseudomnesia: The Electrician, an AI-generated image, and refused the prize on stage. He had done it to prove the jury could not tell the difference. He coined the term promptography to separate that thing from photography. Three more years of models have passed since.
The technical signatures we used to spot AI have worn out. Six-fingered hands, overlapping teeth, eyes without reflection, skin too smooth, in 2022 models they were signals, today rarely. Cryptographic watermarks exist, but they only survive if the publishing chain preserves them, and it almost never does. The automatic labels on Instagram and TikTok arrive late or do not arrive at all.
Authenticity shifts from pixel to process. The question is not only what you see, it is where it comes from. Who made it, in what place, on what day, with what camera. For an editor this is the work he has always done when opening a portfolio. For a general reader it is a change of habit: stop trusting your eyes, start asking for provenance.
For the photographer the consequence is sharp. If you want your photographs to be recognizable as real in five years, provenance has to be prepared now. Save your raws, write down date and place, keep the context, leave traces of yourself in the scene. The photographs that will stay credible are not the most beautiful ones, they are the ones that can prove they exist.
Marco Savarese
Editor-in-Chief
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marco Savarese
Marco Savarese is Editor-in-Chief at Eyeshot, the independent publisher he founded in Italy in 2018. He spends most of his year reading portfolios, judging the Open Call, and editing the magazine catalogue. The reading desk is open, and he takes one-to-one Professional Reviews from photographers working seriously on long-term projects.
Who Finishes Your Photograph
NOTE #210. A photo isn’t finished until it survives to where people see it. Paul Strand chose hand photogravure for Photographs of Mexico so the printed copy kept the tonal weight of his prints. Protect the tone to the end, or the worst medium decides for you.
What the Dark Does
NOTE #209. A face lost in shadow reads as underexposed, a defect to fix. Gordon Willis kept Brando’s eyes in the dark in The Godfather and held it against the studio. Before you rescue a shadow, ask what it does; if you can say it, you decided it.
The Place After
NOTE #208. Of a huge event, often only an ordinary place is left. In On This Site (1996) Joel Sternfeld photographed fifty banal American places where violence happened, each with a line of text. Photograph the aftermath, and let the line do the work.
The Photo Made Together
NOTE #206. Street photography teaches you to steal people; there’s another way. In Malick Sidibรฉ’s Bamako studio the youth chose how to be seen. Before you take someone, ask how they’d want to look, and make the photo together.
Write Your Own Rules
NOTE #205. The thing that improves you most isn’t a new camera, it’s a short list of your own faults. Tony Ray-Jones kept a notebook of orders to himself and it shaped Martin Parr. Write your three rules and keep them in your pocket.
Watch the Master Work
NOTE #204. You don’t learn from a master’s finished prints, you learn from watching them work. In 1962 Joel Meyerowitz watched Robert Frank shoot, quit his job that day, and picked up a camera. Watch the body, not the result.
The Work Before the Name
NOTE #203. The worth of a photo and the worth of the byline are two different things. Koudelka shot the 1968 Prague invasion anonymously as ‘P.P.’ and revealed it sixteen years later. Photograph what must be photographed even when no one will know it was you.
The Subject You Run From
NOTE #202. The strongest subject you have is the one you’d rather not photograph. Ishiuchi Miyako went back to Yokosuka, the occupied base town she was taught to fear, and made it her life’s work. Point the camera where it’s uncomfortable.