(in italiano sotto)
From 16 to 19 November, the PhotoVogue Festival 2023 was held in Milan, whose theme was 'What Makes Us Human? Image in the Age of A.I.".
I had the pleasure of being one of the speakers, with a lecture entitled 'Broken Mirror. A dystopian guide to crossing the border', and to exhibit my project Broken Mirror, together with authors such as Charlie Engman, Jonas Bendiksen, Michael Christopher Brown and others. The group exhibition was curated by Chiara Bardelli Nonino.
More info here: PhotoVogue Festival 2023.
Below you will find the transcript of my lecture in English and Italian.
A WITNESS TO REALITY
My name is Filippo Venturi and I am a documentary photographer. My job requires being a reliable witness of reality. Through my photographic projects, I tell true stories and strive to do so honestly for those who will observe my photographs. I also have a degree in Computer Science, so over the years I have carefully observed technological innovations, especially those related to imagery. In recent months, TTI (text to image) software has made remarkable progress. Today it can generate images that effectively mimic photographs. This has prompted me to reflect on the future of coexistence between photographs and images generated with artificial intelligence.
COEXISTENCE OF PHOTOGRAPHS AND SYNTHOGRAPHS
In some areas, such as advertising photography, the advertised product was already idealised and thus distanced from reality, with physical or digital interventions. Therefore, I believe that photographs and synthographs will be indistinguishable and alternating in this field, at least for those who consume them, aware of the distance from reality. There are already advertising campaigns created without the use of photographers. Maybe only a widely echoed campaign is needed to make this phenomenon evident to everyone.
COEXISTENCE OF PHOTOJOURNALISM AND SYNTHOGRAPHY
Concerning documentary photography and photojournalism, I hope they continue to travel on a parallel track to generated images. However, I acknowledge that this might not be the case in future.
A few months ago, Amnesty International used synthographs in place of photographs to protect Colombian protesters attending a 2019 protest, to promote a cause that, for this reason, finished in the background. Those synthographs attracted a lot of controversy, despite Amnesty International explicitly stated that they had used them. Surely they chose the wrong time to do this experiment.
COULD IT BE A FAIR IDENTIKIT OF REALITY?
However, I wonder whether, in the future, the generated images could be used to make what I call 'identikit of reality'. Already today, in the absence of a photograph, a sketch of a crime suspect is made based on eyewitness descriptions. When an event happens in the future without photographers ready to document it, will we reconstruct that event in that location, with images generated with the help of possible eyewitnesses? Already with photography we cannot show the complexity of reality. What to photograph, how to frame it, which photographs to discard, etc. represent so many layers where we forfeit a slice of reality. But representing it without any contact risks distancing us even further.
BROKEN MIRROR
In recent months, I started working with artificial intelligence and generating images. With these softwares I could have created any kind of image. I could have improvised as a comic book artist for example. But in the end I came back to themes I like and know better. I didn't want to use artificial intelligence simply as a shortcut, but I wanted it to be conceptually relevant within the visual project I was developing. In one of these works, I tried to portray in a different way the totalitarian dictatorship that characterises North Korea, a country I had already visited and reported on as a documentary photographic report. This work is called Broken Mirror and uses a language that mimics a documentary style in photography. The basic idea is to insert an alien and destabilising element into the daily life of North Koreans. I chose to introduce insects and spiders, which gradually increase in quantity and size, until they take complete control over the North Koreans. At some point though, the North Koreans themselves begin to transform into these giant insects and they finally become the creatures they used to fear: this actually symbolises their complete submission.
THE INVASIVE AND CONTROLLING NATURE OF TECHNOLOGY
Generating the images the way I had conceived and described them with the prompt, required thousands of attempts and a lot of frustration. The creative process was largely in the hands of artificial intelligence.
However, the selection of images was a compromise between what I wanted to achieve and what I was offered. I did not always get what I wanted. Other times the artificial intelligence inserted unexpected elements that I chose to keep. During this process, I realised that the metaphor I had used, did not just represent the North Korean totalitarian dictatorship, but it did also represent technology itself. In particular, its invasive and controlling nature. With my work, I therefore exploited the new potential that artificial intelligence offers, to express a fear I have towards it.
BREATHING REALITY
After several months fully immersed in this technology, I felt a strong need to return to photographing people's stories. This new technology will be part of the tools l use in the future, but the quiet, solitary nights spent at the computer generating images, reminded me why, at one point in my life, I set aside my passion for computing to embrace photography. I needed to step outside, breathe in reality and eventually capture its traces with my camera.
