Should all photographers be worried?
In 2014, Robert Shore published a fascinating book on Post Photography: The Artist with a Camera. The jacket explained:
Post-Photography tries to answer that question by investigating the exciting new language of photographic image-making that is emerging in the digital age of anything-is-possible and everything-has-been-done-before.
Found imagery has become increasingly important in post-photographic practice, with the internet serving as a laboratory for a major kind of image-making experimentation. But artists also continue to create entirely original works using avant-garde techniques drawn from both the digital and analogue eras.
This week, in 2023, we are witnessing how AI and NFTs have created a new market for artworks in this post-photographic school. As reported by TylerD in LuckyTrader, the AI artist Roope Rainisto and the Fellowship AI sold post-photographic images for $2.2 million in NFTs in just 30 minutes!
As a photographer of natural landscapes, I’m most intrigued by the artistic approach of Post Photography. I may start exploring it because I’m already experimenting with ChatGPT text-to-image generators.
One question I have is whether Post Photography might encompass or describe all images generated through AI, not just ones that look photographic. Does an image that looks like a painting fall within this approach? If so, should we call it Post Painting? Everything digital?