Understanding and Appreciating the Interplay of Photography and AI in Image-Making Practices

Abstract Rapid technological advances have raised questions about the ontological status of the photographic medium as a form of “writing” or “drawing” with light. These advances include recent forms of generative AI (GenAI), where photographic materials frequently feature in training data and novel images can be generated that appear photographic. Some are inclined to categorize these images as photographs, moving past historic conceptions of the medium, while others argue that a distinction should be made between these new practices and “classic photography.” This article advances the latter view, arguing that just as photography was not the “death of painting,” so AI is unlikely to be the death of photography. By examining how new practices bring together GenAI and photography, this article undertakes a taxonomical project to discern the nature of these relationships and make space for photographic practices to continue to flourish independently of GenAI, while also distinguishing between new practices involving GenAI that are artistically inclined and those that are not. These distinctions are important, it is demonstrated, because if we cannot get basic facts about how these items were created and the practices in which they were made right, then we cannot get to fruitful aesthetic discourse about them.