Hypothesis:Photography and Truth: Can a photograph lie?

Opening quote: to set the scene choose an appropriate quote from key texts or source that you have read and understood. Or select something Will Lakeman said in class discussion around ethics using AI in photography.

Introduction (250 words): Describe how photography from its invention as a new technology in 1839 was viewed as a threat to traditional artforms such as painting and drawing. Provide an overview of why photography (like all other art forms) is an illusion and a representation of reality (reflect on your essay earlier on the Origin of Photography). Explain what AI is as a new technology, and how it is already part of lives, give examples (Google, speech recognition, generative AI etc). Discuss both human and societal benefits and potential dangers of AI, again use examples such as Geoffrey Linton resigning from Google to bring awareness, or Sam Altman’s (CEO of OpenAI) being questioned by USA congress. Select one quote by either Linton or Altman and comment (either for or against). Introduce the two images that you have chosen as examples of the above.

“to collect photographs is to collect the world”, this quote references to collecting experiences and places in the world in a file as a whole, which in my interpretation is the internet, which gives access to almost everyone what is in this world, however it can be used to deceive people. Photography was a new invention founded in 1839 and was a celebration for some but a threat to others. Most people viewed photography as a break through, something that could be mastered as an art form, but it also threatened artists like painters, and peoples views on art. Although as time went on and photography became more popular, which could start making people money, it started to dive into negative areas of photography’s intention, for example “what made a good photography” which also means what photograph can make money became a strategy game for some photographers. People would stage certain photographs when good technology wasn’t round, and would create an image with those aspects in the way they wanted, and would make a “fake” photograph, so people who saw this would call this an illusion of reality because it wasn’t an image of what it was in the first instant, it was rather an image of how they wanted it to be. Now as technology grew so did photography and images ability to be completely altered. Artists had the ability to completely change what an image looked like, almost make up a whole new image, by removing and adding anything they wanted. This is completely altering reality now, by slightly manipulating an image, in context could put someone anyway for fake murder, or even create a perfect, beautiful image, the question of every image would start to be if it was real or not, or how real was the image. This became a bigger problem within the past 10 years now, such as photoshop and certain image editors, which with enough skill could create anything people wanted. But what is even worse is the invention of AI for photography, which could create any image in the world by using just text that you prompt the AI to do. This could be done even overlaying existing images or images you want the AI to edit. This invention created hands free photography, with no effort, its potential became scary for some people. Others like Geoffrey Linton who worked for google, who was a big part of AI and its ability’s had resigned in order to spread the awareness because of its creation, and that was for its creation in general, not just because of what it can do to photographs.

In the first image I have chosen “Roger Fenton, Valley of the Shadow of Death, April 23, 1855” it shows the aftermath of a war in Ukraine in 1855 at a deserted area of the battle field. in the image it seems to have used cannon balls and tracks used by vehicles. his image looks to be a landscape image to capture the hell of war, it uses techniques of lines and shapes and the placements of the materials work well. Although this image was a good representation of what the photographer was trying to capture, it was apparently said to be stages within some areas of the image. People had found an exact same image but except the cannon balls on the road where not along the road, some of them where in the ditches, and in the image shown at the top of this blog, there are cannon balls scattered all over the tracks. People say he done this to create more of an effect of what happened, and how he was capturing the violence of war. I find it interesting how there are no other figures in the image, and how it shows how docile death is.

In the second image I have chosen “Jeff Wall, Approach, 2014.“, this is because I like how it is something which you need to read about to fully understand its meaning behind it. This image shows a middle-ages black woman wrapped in a blanket , with an empty shopping trolley and some cardboard boxes. To any regular person seeing this image it shows an image of a dolcelatte person staring at a wall, with the image itself being in black and white. It is said (https://jeff-wall-contemporary-artist.tumblr.com/post/145276076751/approach-2014-this-a-piece-from-walls-latest) that this image depicts a variety of incidents revolving around themes of domesticity, property, separateness, territory and identity, which is interesting when u look at the image, as homelessness seems to be mainly between them through territory and who the owner’s of what areas. It also makes you think what made this person become homeless, drugs? Domesticity? Government? The image raises lots of questions but says a lot at the same time. (https://journals.openedition.org/ideas/5233?lang=en) It is said that “wall” (the photographer who took the image) took this image as a way for people to reflect on the world, like its politics, and what is has become, or for him to even spread the awareness of homelessness. He says that an image like this questions reality, mainly in photography to question what an authentic image is, and how real is it.