I have no idea still why so many cultural critics and gatekeepers of photography are intent on walking this medium off another cliff with Generative AI as they already helped throw our current photo landscape into crisis starting ten years ago giving themselves over vicariously to Facebook/Instagram. All print magazines shuttered and websites and abandoned one of the most interesting and free vehicles, blogs. So many are complicit in this not for nefarious purposes but the neglect. Yet we could learn a lesson and not throw it off course yet again with embracing Generative AI. And you absolutely do not get to say Photoshop is the same thing nor dare compare it to collage or digital art. But this is not what has happened. Now there are institutions and classes and degrees and teachers happy to push this along. All in the name of 'look at this neat trick.'

It's maddening but so many people lap it up with thousands of likes and starry eyed comments (though I do enjoy when regular people in comments on Instagram push back) and 'it's just like when painters were upset about the invention of the camera?’ No this is devastating. And I'm not even talking about art here which it is devastating for, nor the environment which it is also devastating for, but even more important and this is a very important part of art is the caring about a semblance of the stability of society and people's collective well being. Is it "fun" to put a tool out into the universe that people can make fake photos and videos of people who didn't do the things that are in the images but no one can tell if it's real or not? Photography is really shattered and it's not because of this disastrous Generative AI tool and social media algorithms, but the people who are the heads of this medium embrace of all of it and demand little or no guardrails. With no second guessing of the disaster they have co-signed in the name of art.

(August 24, 2024) *just gotten worse