Paper (Proposed) - Initial Stocktake

Paper (Proposed) - Initial Stocktake

As Photography is seemingly at (yet another) crossroads, this article(s) proposes the undertaking of a stocktake on the medium, specifically looking at the still image, in an attempt to locate value and place in contemporary society.

“Photographs really are experienced captured, and the camera is the ideal

arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood. To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge- and, therefore, like power.”

Susan Sontag-On Photography

I intend to start with an everyday use of the medium, that is the still image as the provision of evidence of an established fact. Photography has always provided a truth, not always the whole truth but a truth none the less. With current thinking suggesting that artificial image generation will become increasingly prevalent in providing realistic imagery, will AI therefore become a much larger threat to photographies power to show a truth.

What value will the evidence image be, say of a delivered parcel or a completed task when software can generate an image to suggest the affirmative? The still image as grounds for evidence is just one of the foundations seemingly being eroded.