WHAT’S BEHIND DOOR NUMBER ONE?

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THERE WILL BE OCEANS OF INK SPILLED OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS (metaphorically: I’m old) in commentaries on the effect of artificial intelligence on the creative process, and a whole separate wing of those results will be allocated to the opportunities and challenges specifically pertaining to photography. For one of several times over the last few centuries, we will again be trotting out some very old questions, i.e., “what is a picture, anyway?”, or “I dunno, is this art?” As regards any pairing of A.I. and human effort, however, may I humbly suggest an additional question: “Just who the hell is in charge here?”

This whole wormhole of thought has come swirling around in my skull of late as I have contemplated exactly what composition is, since I believe it is the most (excuse the expression) human of all choices in photography. The decisions on what things will make it into the frame, where they will occur in it, how they are to be balanced with each other, are all deliberate acts of judgement, a choice derived from millions of other decisions we’ve already made it life. It is a conspicuously human act. A.I. is the product, or the sum, if you like, of the world’s collective accumulation of decisions, and so can serve as a time-saving helpmeet, a technical tool that I can use to massage or mold a particular image. However, in the truest sense, it is not an image generator. Ideas flow into A.I. and are shuffled or assembled by it, but it itself derives its smarts from the genuine knowledge that it collects and remixes. It does not supply the creative spark.

Composition is a choice. Humans make choices. In comparison, the re-creation of some thing from a series of things, remixed into yet another thing, is what A.I. handily does. It is a selection from options. Humans=choices. Machines=options. This is why so many A.I. images, no matter how well-worded their request prompts or how many gazillions of possibilities are stirred into its kitchen, ring false…as not real enough, or, worse, as too real to be real (this is getting deep, so if you want to pause to slip into your waders, I’ll wait). Here’s what I’m saying, without too much excess cuteness or irony; even in a world where ever more doors offer ever more possibilities, the instincts and desires of the creative mind will always, always be Door Number One. Photographic composition is purposeful, intentional. As in the above image, there is no “reason” for how or where or why it’s shot, except the only reason that’s needed; I wanted it to be so. Relinquishing that supremely human decision-making process may be a lot of things, but it’s no longer photography.