[Unstagram] Why Did the Photo Contest Winner Refuse the Award?

In the AI Era, Revisiting 'Is a Photograph Realistic?'

Boris Eldagsen, an artist active in Germany, submitted an AI-generated image to the 2023 SONY Photo Award competition and was selected as the winner in the Creative category. Titled "THE ELECTRICIAN," this work is a portrait ‘image’ of two women that appears to have been taken and developed using early photographic techniques (vintage). It is one of the pieces from the project "PSEUDOMNESIA: Fake Memories," which expresses ‘false memories’ using the visual language of the 1940s. The faces depicted are of virtual characters who never actually existed. Depicting ‘fakes more realistically than the real’ is something AI excels at. This is where the long-standing photographic themes of ‘memory’ and ‘fake’ intersect.

'THE ELECTRICIAN' ⓒBoris Eldagsen, awarded in the photography contest sponsored by Sony and organized by the World Photography Foundation

After the announcement of the winners, he sparked controversy by stating, “I refuse the award because this image is not a photograph.” To clarify, it was not the organizers who revoked his award due to the work being AI-generated; he voluntarily declined the prize. He said he had no intention of deceiving anyone by presenting the image as a photograph to win the award, but rather aimed to spark discussion about photography and new technologies (AI) and to lead new changes such as establishing a category for AI-generated images. He added that he wanted a public debate with the organizers, but since it was not accepted (the organizers showed little response), he refused the award. His award was canceled, and after a period of silence, the organizers issued a somewhat delayed statement last month.

“We welcome a variety of experimental approaches to image creation, including cutting-edge digital practices. Along with correspondence with Boris and his confirmation, we considered that his submission met the criteria for this category, and we supported his participation. While elements of AI practice relate to the artistic context of image creation, this award has always been and will continue to be a platform that advocates for the excellence and skill of photographers and artists working in the photographic medium.” They made it very difficult to say that AI work is not disqualified in this category. They did not even explicitly say that the refusal was by the artist.

I am more curious about what the visual language of the 1940s used in the image generation was than about his true intention in refusing the award. The results vary significantly depending on the words used in the commands given to the machine. On the internet, prompts?the commands for AI work?are bought and sold. The ridicule of ‘photography by words alone’ has become reality. His work not only looks realistic but also visually reveals some inner desolation or melancholy of the artist. The fact that machines imitate human emotions, and sometimes appear more human than human emotional expression, complicates the thought. It also brings a sense of emptiness, questioning whether human emotions are so shallow that machines can easily imitate them.

Several months earlier, a British artist named Mario Cavalli showed images of people dressed in Victorian-style clothing created using AI. AI’s output is the result of verbalizing and linking vast amounts of data from media such as paintings, photographs, texts, and videos, learning and combining them. The images of the Victorian era (mid to late 19th century, when Queen Victoria ruled the UK) seem to have been verbalized and learned by the machine in this way. Cavalli said he did not use software like Photoshop to create these images but only used 'Midjourney' by inputting text prompt commands. He used words like ‘sharp focus,’ ‘10mm lens,’ and ‘wet plate collodion photograph.’ Incidentally, last year there was news of an auction in the UK of ledgers containing photographs of real Victorian-era figures. Comparing these with actual photographs might give a vague sense of the relationship between language and reality.

People dressed in Victorian-style clothing created by AI
?Mario Cavalli

Real-life figures from the Victorian era. These are photos attached to police crime records that were auctioned in the UK last year.