Living Amongst Them

I had a dream in which I was selecting a single synthetic image of one person who does not exist every day. I was not sure why I would do this, except perhaps to guarantee a new face to ponder, one that does not wear a mask and one that has no past to be concerned about. I felt like it would be a good way to accustom myself to the future.

In fact, I did not have such a dream, but as I write this I am aware of how tired I am from staying awake much too late to watch, on television, the Georgia election results in the US which had about them the potential for salvaging democracy for the next few years. It was exciting and quite moving to see Reverend Warnock, the first Black Democrat to be elected a senator from the South, give his acceptance speech referencing Dr. Martin Luther King and the need to stand shoulder to shoulder while moving forward for social justice. But his screen froze mid-speech, the Wi-Fi apparently unable to accommodate his eloquence. 

Yesterday, before watching television, I had actually chosen one synthetic image of a person who does not exist, picking from a litter of images that a certain website offered. The parameters I selected were “Joyful white young-adult female with long blond hair and blue eyes.” I found her (it?) this morning still ensconced on my computer screen in two variations, with different background colors. I quite liked the surprise of her/it being there, although I also found it somewhat destabilizing. 

And I began to reflect on all the lonely adolescents, or old people, or locked-in people, or anybody, who will be selecting different faces to be their acquaintances or even their friends. They may want them there to bridge their loneliness or to freshen up their lives, or even to somehow “humanize” a screen otherwise filled with only folders and documents. These synthetic images mimic the standardized imagery that we apparently prefer – our politicians need to look a certain way, as do our athletes and other celebrities, as do our high school yearbook photos, our driver’s licenses, and even our photographs of wars and of landscapes. The only type of photograph that seems, at least some of the time, to welcome more variations is the mug shot, in which one sees people not as they are supposed to be, bright and engaged, but as befuddled, in various degrees of surprise or even shock, situated within the ambiguous state somewhere between innocence and guilt into which they have been placed. 

Synthetic images replicate our standardized images quite well (computers train on them), so much so that many of us may well aspire to be like them, somewhat sanitized and more conforming. When I was invited years ago by a major photo agency to help them figure out how to describe photographs in their metadata I was disappointed at how they had been labeling them in reductive ways, excluding atmosphere, ambiguity, subjectivity, and the in-betweenness that makes so much photography intriguing. 

These synthetic images come from a similar mindset, although they have about them a cyborg-like look that infers a certain immortality – unlike us, who look at photographs of people knowing they portend that person’s death and that of the observer as well. Synthetic beings only change if we want them to (algorithms can be applied that make them transform, appearing to age or even to get younger). These algorithmic images ask why we would want to associate with photographs that so strongly imply disappearance and decay, or, more simply put, our own mortality.

Soon, of course, such synthetic images will increasingly no longer just appear to pose. They will be able to talk, to argue, to move, to show concern, to philosophize, to mourn, to engage erotically, to write poetry and create music and make their own photographs. They have about them enormous potential, so much so that we may begin to feel in comparison dwarfed, even intimidated. 

So as I  begin to slowly get used to cohabiting with synthetic images of people, knowing that all kinds of other realistic-looking pseudo-photographic imagery will soon emerge, I begin to wonder what is real, and how does one know, and where does one find it? 

If photographs were a way to connect to the far away and unknown, reference points that could expand our horizons into an appreciation of what we may not be aware of, what do synthetic images connect us to? And, once we begin to live amongst them, how do we find our way back? 

-the morning of January 6, 2021

AUTHOR BIO

Fred Ritchin is Dean Emeritus of the International Center of Photography and formerly professor of Photography and Imaging at New York University. Ritchin served as picture editor of the New York Times Magazine and co-founded PixelPress, an experimental online publication. He created the first multimedia version of the New York Times, and the online project “Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Peace” nominated by the Times for a Pulitzer Prize. His books include After Photography and Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen. He has curated many exhibitions, including An Uncertain Grace: The Photographs of Sebastião Salgado and has received the NPPA John Long Ethics Award.