4 October 2024: 10×10 hosted a salon panel, “Photography and Photobooks in the Age of AI” at Magnum Foundation, featuring Fred Ritchin, Brian Palmer and Alexey Yurenev.
Fred Ritchin is a writer, educator, photography critic. Dean emeritus of the International Center of Photography (ICP) School, Ritchin was also the founding director of the documentary photography and photojournalism program at the ICP, professor of photography and imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and co-director of the NYU/Magnum Foundation photography and human rights educational program. His forthcoming book The Synthetic Eye (Thames & Hudson, 2024) is a revelatory glimpse into the future of photography, one where the very nature of how images are created is fundamentally transformed by artificial intelligence. This book looks at photography’s strengths, what it has meant for individuals and for society, its massive transformations caused by a variety of factors in the digital age, and the newer possibilities for image making.
Brian Palmer is a visual journalist and educator based in Richmond, Virginia. Palmer is a former CNN correspondent, US News and World Report photographer, and US NewsBeijing Bureau Chief. He is a co-founder of the Writing with Light campaign, whose Statement of Principles asserts that “the integrity of the photographer, as the author of the image, is considered to be paramount in establishing the photograph’s veracity” and defines nonfiction photography as “a recording of the visible in which the photographer strives to represent actualities (events, people, etc.) in a fair and accurate manner with appropriate context.”
Alexey Yurenev is a photographer and visual researcher interested in how technology shapes the production of knowledge and collective memory. Yurenev’s projects have been published in The New York Times, National Geographic and Topic, and exhibited at FOAM museum. Since 2019, Yurenev has been working on a visual research project, Silent Hero, investigating capacities and limitations of technologies such as machine learning, photography, forensic imaging and interviews with the survivors in generating proximity to histories. His recent book Seeing Against Seeing, generated with the aid of AI, arose from a collaboration with the designer Teun van der Heijden and the Anti-Krieg Museum in Berlin.
Watch a video recording of salon #74 on 10×10 Photobooks’ YouTube channel.
A big thank you to Jasmin Chang, Elio Alexander and Kristen Lubben at Magnum Foundation for facilitating this salon. Thank you to Jeff Gutterman for video recording and Shea Baasch for salon photography.