Evaluate: “Imaging After Photography” at The Moody Center for the Arts

As we start to aim to grasp what artificially generated photographs imply for our tradition and for the way forward for pictures, we’ll want an orientation. In 1990, Photoshop was launched* and everybody proclaimed: How will we all know which pictures are actual anymore? Anyone was in a position to digitally manipulate {a photograph}, and this artistic technique of manipulation was broadly utilized by photographers and ultimately accepted as a brand new photographic approach. Due to this transfer away from the “true” nature of pictures — materials, chemical, moist, darkish, indexical — students started calling the period on the flip of the millennium “post-photography.”

Little greater than a decade later, round 2010, pictures nonetheless maintained its foundational components — mild, “writing,” reminiscence — however the introduction of the iPhone digital camera and its subsequent billions of pictures circulating the web, drowned us in digital photographs that attacked us at each second of our lives, and the time period “after post-photography” emerged. Today, in 2026, as we witness speedy developments in artificially generated picture making (i.e., megacorporations taking our pictures after which having these pictures converge with others’ pictures so as to generate new pictures) students are actually considering the time period “post-photographic photography.” 

If all of this sounds complicated, it’s as a result of it’s. None of us — not even students and historians of pictures and media — have a grasp on what is occurring and there solely exists extremely speculative theories of what’s going to develop into of image-making within the close to future. As we dwell with these quickly shifting fantastical technological developments — mixed with a scarcity of laws — they’re remodeling our methods of seeing and understanding photographs. And whereas it appears as if these Frankensteined AI photographs are nonetheless based upon conventional pictures, it begs the query: How a lot change can one medium bear earlier than it turns into one thing else solely? 

Imaging After Photography, at the moment on view at The Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, is a wonderful exploration into our new world of photographs generated by the usage of synthetic intelligence. The exhibition is curated by The Moody Center’s Executive Director Alison Weaver and new Associate Curator Noor Alé. The unbelievable design (ordinary for The Moody) is by the design workforce of World: Alejandro Stein and Frank J Mondragón. The present brings collectively seven profitable artists working with synthetic intelligence immediately, together with Nouf Aljowaysir (Saudi Arabia), Refik Anadol (Turkey), Gregory Chatonsky (France), Sofia Crespo (Argentina), Joan Fontcuberta (Spain), Lisa Oppenheim (USA), and Trevor Paglen (USA). This world cohort corresponds with FotoFest’s upcoming fortieth anniversary Global Visions , and may absolutely be a must-see for all guests of the FotoFest Biennial.

In 2022, text-to-image packages like Dall-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion (all diffusion fashions) turned broadly out there to the general public, no matter technological experience. With these packages anybody might (bizarrely) create photographs that regarded like pictures, with out a digital camera, and with none precise supply materials. Google’s newest Nano Banana is extremely sensible, and it is aware of all about you. Gone are the waxy our bodies, hotdog fingers, wonky views, and unreadable textual content. It has glitches, in fact, however general, the extent of photorealism is outstanding. This means it’s a lot tougher to identify a faux {photograph} on-line and visible tradition won’t ever be the identical. While this new world of synthetic creation makes digital pictures really feel previous (which makes darkroom chemistry and movie really feel virtually prehistoric), I’m delighted that this exhibition encourages a dialog throughout a spectrum of picture manufacturing, together with analog, digital, photogram, and artificially generated pictures.

Imaging After Photography opens with artist Trevor Paglen, maybe the most effective identified of all artists working within the subject of AI and visible arts immediately. Paglen has had a substantial presence within the Texas artwork panorama, serving as artist-in-residence at The Moody Center in 2025; collaborating within the Texas Asia Society group present Space City: Art within the Age of Artemis in 2024; and serving as artist-in-residence at Artpace, San Antonio in 2013. The Moody Center awards Paglen’s pioneering efforts within the subject with what seems like a little bit solo present in the principle viewing space. I personally am thrilled to see his relatively well-known picture of Winona Ryder (our Gen X queen), from his Eigenface collection (2016), included in Paglen’s daring New Inquiry essay on deepfakes, “Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking At You)” (2016), earlier than any of us knew what was coming. A wall of pink flowers, from the Bloom collection (2020), is strikingly fairly — with artificiality’s telltale lack of perspective — and it is going to be well timed as FotoFest’s world guests arrive in Houston this spring. The dates of Paglen’s works are important: as early as 2016 by 2022, years earlier than AI applied sciences have been broadly out there to the general public and solely a handful of artists have been able to working within the then-esoteric expertise. Paglen’s investigation into synthetic intelligence, surveillance, and knowledge assortment at all times points a warning about our hidden energy constructions and their methods.

Leaving the principle viewing area, we enter right into a darkish room the place a number of giant back-lit screens, coated with giant and small photographs, minimize by area giving the sense that you’ve shrunken and are actually caught inside your laptop computer. I completely loved the set up from Gregory Chatonsky whose equally whimsical and terrifying Completion 1.0 (2021) feels dystopian, as if we’ve got reached the way forward for robotic intelligence and all that’s left of humanity is its absurdity. “Real” pictures on the ground are broadcasts from ImageNet (a database used to coach AI fashions), whereas “fake” photographs on the wall are AI-generated hallucinations made by cross-referencing ImageNet classes. A professorial voice, generated by a man-made “reading” of textbooks of the historical past of pictures, describes the brand new cross referenced photographs, making for a foolish lunacy that additionally feels remarkably actual and never not like being in an precise classroom. Chatonsky reveals us how our historical past of pictures, and its lecturers, might simply get replaced by AI robots, however extra intriguingly, he reveals maybe how our historical past of pictures has been performing this zany efficiency all alongside — a mashup of insights, misunderstandings, educational bullshit, artwork jargon, blatant omissions, and overrepresentations. Our human brains soak up biased info, calculate that with out there knowledge, and spit it out once more in new kind. Chatonsky suggests this new approach of calculating photographs isn’t removed from how we’ve been studying all alongside, prompting us to ask, “Who is the robot?” 

Perhaps the largest problem to artists immediately trying to convey a way of the technological elegant inherent in synthetic intelligence is easy methods to adequately characterize the tons of of tens of millions of photographs which are taken (sure, you gave consent), used to feed knowledge units and practice algorithms, so as to metabolize (with a little bit of indigestion) and crap out an infinite quantity of latest photographs? As of now, I’ve not seen it efficiently accomplished (please let me know when you’ve got). Here, alongside Chatonsky’s work, are two giant back-lit screens displaying a grid of small pictures. Not even shut. A wall of tiny pictures received’t do it, together with the spectacular Little Infinity (2020) by Jason Salavon on the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Something that maybe will get shut is the web site this person does not exist by Philip Wang. On this website, all of us perceive that if we refresh the web page each second of daily, at some point we’ll see our grandmother, or our son, or…will we?

In an homage to Edward Steichen (1879-1973), a pioneer in colour pictures, the artist Lisa Oppenheim explores his love of flowers in her collection Monsieur Steichen (2024). She makes use of AI expertise to “breed” quite a lot of orchid made for Steichen in 1910 that now not exists. This intelligent and eerie idea of visually birthing one thing that’s extinct, is suited to AI’s frequent associations with Dr. Frankenstein (reducing and splicing, and collaging and compiling) though Oppenheim’s presentation feels joyful whereas nonetheless sustaining an applicable quantity of creepy surrealism inherent within the expertise. The colours of Oppenheim’s dye-transfer photographs mimic Steichen’s personal experiments with flower pictures that seem fully unhinged — a fanatical magnificence dropped at life by the mad physician (that’s what colour pictures felt like then!). Steichen, a relentless experimenter, would have definitely loved AI expertise so Oppenheim’s adulation feels applicable.

The artist Joan Fontcuberta juxtaposes his personal analog pictures alongside AI-generated photographs of corals in What Darwin Missed (2024), initiating a little bit recreation of “which one is real?” However, the work permits us to suppose the benefits inherent on this visible magical considering that may support myriad scientists of their work. The addition of sculpture all through the present is great, providing a refreshing juxtaposition of very actual objects (uncommon black coral; a bust that reverberates historical Greek requirements; scaffolding mimicking city environments) to an exhibition centered upon the invisible and hidden processes of computational imaginative and prescient. Most of us don’t know what these hidden processes seem like, and with pictures’s uncanny skill to make the invisible seen, that’s the AI exhibition I want to see — the wizard backstage, not solely the Emerald City. 

The Saudi artist Nouf Aljowaysir was current on the opening and graciously spoke with many guests. Her interference of the famed British explorer and photographer Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) types a vibrant spot in artists using this new expertise to reexamine Nineteenth-century pictures, particularly the “oriental” archive. She permits us to see the biases and intentions behind the labels and classifications utilized immediately to pictures comprising knowledge units, exposing that Nineteenth century prejudices surrounding the Middle East and its folks haven’t modified a lot.

Aqueous cyanotypes by artist Sofia Crespo (who makes her personal knowledge units and algorithms) construct upon the photographer Anna Atkins’ early cyanotypes of algae. Crespo holds a deep data of media and pure sciences, and her option to work in cyanotypes — an early type of picture making additionally made with out a digital camera — is becoming right here. Crespo illustrates how our present visible panorama consists of layers upon layers of mediation. Here, we encounter movies, comprised of frames inside neural networks, which are taught by studying hand-printed cyanotypes which have been digitized. Gone are the times (not way back) of the singular masterful {photograph} — the Henri Cartier-Bressons and the Dorothea Langes. There are just too many photographs in our visible panorama immediately for an iconic {photograph} to exist (I’m right here for the feedback). We should give up to the Postmodern situation, and should you consider pictures hasn’t succumbed already, this new artificially clever artform will guarantee it. If we are able to now make “photographs” with out mild or inscription, all prior certainties are in flux. 

The solely underwhelming inclusion is surprisingly from the normally assertively wonderful Refik Anadol. I noticed his Unsupervised on the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2022, and for all of the unhealthy press it acquired for being merely “spectacular,” the crowds beloved it and have been strewn round on beanbags gawking on the new iteration of the technological elegant. Whether it was good artwork or not didn’t appear to matter. However, Anadol’s inclusion right here, Quantum Memories Nature Studies (2021), feels small, hemmed in, as if I’ve stumbled upon an promoting mild field on the road selling one other podcast on quantum physics. Despite figuring out that an astonishing 200 million digital photographs of landscapes have been used to create new photographs of latest landscapes, I’m not essentially contaminated with a imaginative and prescient of parallel universes. Anadol’s field is flanked by two broad screens displaying enlarged pixels that don’t appear to correlate to the art work. This work is a part of Anadol’s bigger experiment, Dataland, opening quickly in Los Angeles because the world’s first AI museum.

The greatest phrase to explain the exhibition general could be remarkably balanced. It is a visually engaging and intellectually stimulating present that lends a nice introduction to many subjects and issues surrounding synthetic intelligence and image-making immediately. However, it’s not farfetched to say {that a} visually beautiful and balanced exhibition on the presence of AI in our present panorama will not be what we’d like, and even need, proper now. As I write this, Elon Musk’s AI platform Grok simply revealed tens of millions of nonconsensual sexualized photographs of ladies, together with obvious minors. While Apple and Google have eliminated apps that “nudify” topics, Musk’s disdain for regulation has left Grok practical regardless of a public outcry from victims, state legislators, and European nations. 

As Musk’s consideration wanes away from electrical vehicles and governmental positions, he has elevated his involvement in AI growth, creating the world’s largest privately owned firm. His hunt for much less laws for his applied sciences and corporations (when he acquired Twitter, now X, in early 2022 there was a sustained surge in hate speech) has led him to ascertain roots in Texas the place lots of his corporations now function. Bastrop and the encompassing Austin space host SpaceX and Boring Co. The bordertown of Boca Chica has been renamed Starbase and is getting used for SpaceX operations. Corpus Christi now holds the world’s largest lithium manufacturing unit owned by Musk. While Musk designates his need for much less laws as “freedom,” it has been largely understood as irresponsible at a time when foundations for the way we’ll all make the most of this expertise sooner or later are being laid. 

Additional issues surrounding AI embrace the huge quantity of power consumption that the expertise requires, a lot of which is harnessed in knowledge facilities. Our state holds the second largest variety of data centers within the United States (behind Virginia) attributable to comparatively cheap land and lack of laws, and these facilities contribute significantly to environmental destruction. While these are a number of of the native points surrounding the expansion of synthetic intelligence, clearly this doesn’t embrace common moral issues, reminiscent of a big danger of misinformation, privateness rights surrounding knowledge, false photographs of victimized populations, threats to journalism, race/gender/class biases inherent in knowledge coaching, amongst others. Discerning which photographs are “real” or “fake” is just the tip of the iceberg as we discover the ramifications of synthetic intelligence upon our visible (and pure) panorama. 

Both curators remarked in a pre-opening day presentation that Imaging After Photography has no thesis. In instances reminiscent of these, when there’s a great collective dialog (and confusion) surrounding synthetic intelligence in all its many aspects — that might be described as concern at greatest and misanthropic at worst — to current an exhibition as prescient as this as merely a visually lovely introduction to AI photographs is an odd alternative bordering on harmful. While there’s definitely depth and mental rigor to the present — it leaves breadcrumbs into essential subjects — not taking a stance is a stance. However, what might really feel like a scarcity of braveness or enamel, really finally ends up working solely due to the exhibition’s location on the Rice University campus. Here, a negotiable exhibition permits college students to do the investigative work themselves and provide you with their very own conclusions. The present simply engages college students from such wide-ranging disciplines because the pure sciences, Middle Eastern research, structure, visible arts, philosophy, pc sciences, regulation (mental property debates are ripe), and extra, and lends itself as an unbelievable educating second for college kids to interact with new media and new applied sciences. A corresponding half day symposium, going down on Friday, March 6, with Houston’s personal AI skilled and photographer Rashed Haq, is to not be missed. An exhibit with a gap wall textual content that features at least 5 questions can solely be a great factor on a college campus. It beckons to college students: Come and assist us determine this out collectively, in an mental collaboration between professors, curators, college students, artists, and guests.

The present is a advantageous introduction to the curatorial visions of The Moody Center’s new Associate Curator Noor Alé. Recently relocated from Toronto, Canada, the place she labored at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, that is Alé’s first present on the middle. She accomplished her research at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London with a deal with pictures, movie, and video in up to date artwork. With The Moody Center persistently presenting a number of the most elevated and mental exhibitions in Houston (there are only a few rivals), Alé definitely has the distinctive style and training to reinforce the area. She states, “Houston is a global city, rich in geological, coastal, scientific, and cultural histories, and I am eager to chart my thinking along these constellations of thought. More specifically, in the context of Rice University, the Moody Center’s commitment to convening these expansive, interdisciplinary exchanges resonate with my curatorial lens. It’s this shared vision that emboldens the work I do.”

If the curators say the exhibition lacks a thesis, then its title appears to recommend a robust one. The phrase Imaging After Photography proposes that we are actually or practically — due to artificially clever applied sciences — inhabiting a world the place cameras and photographers are out of date, and have been changed by knowledge units and algorithms. We’re not fairly there but (thanks Gen Z retrophiliacs!). While theories of synthetic intelligence surpassing and overtaking the human species might look like the stuff of science fiction, a world wherein synthetic intelligence exists alongside every of us in varied aspects of our on a regular basis lives is just not far-off. 

As we search an orientation, there’s something that feels becoming — even related — about this delusional, schizophrenic picture making. In our present period of political chaos, when the spectacle — orchestrated by a sociopathic management — has surpassed what we imagined the folks of our nation would enable and has ushered in turmoil till we teeter on the sting of fascism, it’s unsurprising that this neurotic management has embraced the schizophrenic image-making of synthetic intelligence to advertise its ideologies. Most of us now search an orientation, providing a compass delivering a path in direction of survival and hope. The exhibition at The Moody Center does really feel hopeful, in that it proposes that regardless of the huge fantastical modifications this new expertise brings, we won’t lose some primordial connection to the pure world. As for the present state of pictures: it’s a recalibration. A robotic processes our private reminiscences and our visible tradition, reinterprets it, and offers it again to us to find out whether or not it’s actual or not. Until we discover our approach, hold questioning.

*From its very starting pictures was manipulated with analog strategies, with one of many early contributors to the invention of pictures, Hippolyte Bayard, faking his own death in a manipulated self-portrait. Photoshop was distinctive in its fast and simple (and extremely plausible) digital manipulations of pictures.

Imaging After Photography is on view at The Moody Center for the Arts in Houston by May 9, 2026.