The Tree House 6/8 Print

Photography was my first creative outlet at a young age, in the days of manual cameras, film, processing and darkroom printing. I grew from black and white images to color, printing all my own work. I ran a photography school for 11 years and during that time there was the advent of digital photography. Those were the days when Photoshop was in version 1.0 and a massive hard drive was 250MB! The revolutionary move to digital allowed an outflow of expression in ways that were once impossible, but look now! Artificial Intelligence has revolutionized the revolution! A.I. has enormous potential for the release of creativity without the encumbrance of process. That said, it is at this stage a very quirky beast to manage. Results may be fast, but never is there a result that was in my imagination. It may be some time before we get to that and I don't fancy the implant! For now A.I. is a free spirit and it pairs well with what I want. It has a definite flavor that stamps it as A.I. and I rather like it. The entirety of my work now is conducted within vast algorithms of magic. A.I. Imaging is controversial because of its use by nefarious actors. It tells blatant lies. To me that is a good thing. Historically images have always told lies, little white lies maybe, but lies never the less. They are a visual snippet of what was, not of what is. It was taken for granted that photographs were "Real" because they were a better rendition of the memory of what was seen at that time. That is not reality! It is a simulacrum. The saying that a picture is worth a thousand words should read "a thousand lies!" Now that A.I. can do a much better job of it we must earnestly come to believe that images are simply not true. That is not the fault of A.I. I consider it to be one of its virtues. At last, perhaps, the myth is unveiled.