On 17th April 2023, Boris Eldagsen won the Sony World Photography Award in London. However, instead of receiving the award, he confessed that the image he had submitted to the competition had been made in collaboration with various generative Artificial Intelligence systems. The story captured the global imagination and AI generated imagery was propelled into the public consciousness: How does traditional photography differ from AI imagery? Where does the artist’s hand lay and what are the rules around intellectual property?
POST-PHOTOGRAPHY: THE UNCANNY VALLEY opens a year to the day since Eldagsen refused the award, pairing the artist with two emerging AI practitioners, Nouf Aljowaysir and Ben Millar Cole. Highlighting the technology’s rapid evolution, the exhibition demonstrates the collaborative process between artist and machine, exploring themes around heritage, identity and the uncanny. The exhibition also critically engages with AI generated images, which are often viewed with suspicion. ‘Uncanny valley’ is central to this - a term coined in the 1970’s to refer to a sense of unease experienced when facing technology that closely resembles humans, but isn’t convincingly realistic. Generated from traditional photographs, the images in this exhibition are at once familiar and unfamiliar. Distorted elements present themselves, creating an unsettling effect, which pushes them beyond the boundary of traditional photography, and into the realm of post-photography.
A private view will take place at the gallery on Wednesday 17th April (6-9pm).
