A Berlin-based photo artist created a photo with the help of AI and submitted it to the Sony World Photography Awards. After the announcement of the victory, Boris Eldagsen announced that the photo was not real and refused the $5,000 prize, Sony camera equipment, a trip to London for the award ceremony, help in organizing the exhibition and publication of the book. He stated that the purpose of his participation was to check the readiness of contests to distinguish between photos and generated images, as well as an attempt to initiate a discussion.
Eldagsen submitted an image titled “THE ELECTRICIAN” in the “Creative” category at the open worldwide competition. The composition is a portrait of two women, made in the style of the 1940s.
The image is part of the artist’s series of works “PSEUDOMNESIA: Fake Memories”. Pseudomnesia is a medical term meaning memories of events that never happened. As can be concluded from the name, the works of the series are made with the help of II.
“II images and photography should not compete with each other in such an award. These are different entities. II is not a photograph. Therefore, I will not accept the award. By participating in open photo contests, I want to speed up the process for award organizers to recognize this difference and create separate contests for AI-generated images.”
“I applied like a cheeky monkey to see if AI image contests were open. They are not ready. We, the photo world, need an open discussion. A debate about what we want to consider photography and what we don’t. Is the concept of photography sufficient to include AI images, or would that be a mistake?”
The artist revealed the circumstances and expressed his refusal somewhat extravagantly: he went up on stage without an invitation and gave his speech. At first, Eldagsen expected to get a chance to speak when he was given the floor as the winner. But the organizers allowed only the winner of the general competition to speak.
Eldagsen’s win was controversial, with photographers lamenting that an image created without any camera or lighting choices was able to win photography’s top prize, beating real-life photos. But the artist himself does not refer to II’s work as something unequivocally bad:
“Just as photography replaced painting in the representation of reality, artificial intelligence is replacing photography. Don’t be afraid of the future. It will simply become more apparent that our mind has always created a world that causes it to suffer.”
Boris Eldagsen has been engaged in photography for 30 years. Recently, he has focused on exploring the possibilities of generative AI. His knowledge in the field of photography has helped him create images that resemble retro-style photographs as much as possible.
“For me, working with AI image generators is a joint creativity in which I am the director. It’s not about creating a button click. It is a complex process of refining text prompts, developing a workflow, mixing different platforms and methods. The more involved you are in creating the process and developing the parameters, the greater your creative contribution.”
After the incident, the organizers of the World Photography Awards simply removed any mention of Eldagsen from the materials. Also in the exhibition hall, he discovered a new photograph in the place where his work used to hang. Obviously, this is not the level of discussion and openness that the artist was hoping for.
The jury of the competition is even less honored by the fact that in the image it is quite easy to see the features characteristic of II.
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Source: PetaPixel
