Broken Mirror. A dystopian guide to crossing the border | PhotoVogue Festival 2023: What Makes Us Human? Image in the Age of A.I.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Filippo Venturi,

and I am a documentary photographer.

My jobs requires to being a reliable witness of reality.

And through my photographic projects,

I tell true stories and strive to do so honestly

for those who will observe my photographs,

I also have a degree in computer science.

So over the years,

I carefully observed the technological innovations,

especially those one related to imagery.

In recent months, I think that TTI software,

text-to-image softwares, have made remarkable progresses.

So today,

they can generate images that effectively mimic photographs.

This has prompted me to reflect on the future

of the coexistence between photographs and images generated

within artificial intelligence.

In some areas

such as fashion photography or advertising photography,

the advertised product was already analyzed,

and thus, distanced from reality

with physical or digital interventions.

Therefore, I believe that photographs

and syntographs will be indistinguishable,

and alternating in this field.

At last, for those who consume them,

aware of the distance from reality.

There are already advertising campaigns created

without the use of photographers.

I think that maybe only a widely equity campaign is needed

to make this phenomenon evident to everyone.

Concerning documentary photography and photojournalist,

I hope that they continue to travel on a parallel track

to generated images.

However, I acknowledge

that this might not be the case in the future.

A few months ago, Amnesty International used syntographs

in place of photographs

to protect Colombian protesters attending in 2019 protest,

to promote a case that, for this reason,

finished in the background.

Those syntographs attracted a lot of controversy

despite Amnesty International explicitly stated

that they used them.

Surely, they chose the wrong time

to do this kind of experiment.

However, I wonder, if in the future,

the generated images could be used

to make what I call identikit of reality.

Already today in the absence of photograph,

a sketch of a crime suspect is made

based on the eyes witnesses descriptions.

And even happens in the future

without photographers ready to document it.

We will reconstruct that event

in that location with images generated, maybe,

with the help of possible eye witnesses.

Already with photography,

we cannot show the complexity of reality.

What photograph, how to frame it,

which photographs to discard, et cetera,

represent so many layers where we fulfill slices of reality,

but representing it without any contact risks

to distancing us even further.

In recent months,

I started working with artificial intelligence

and generating images.

With this software, I could have created any kind of image.

For example, I could have improvised as a comic book artist,

but in the end,

I came back to the themes I like and know better.

I didn t want to use artificial intelligence

just simply as a shortcut,

but I wanted it to be conceptually relevant

within the visual project I was developing.

In one of this work,

I tried to portray it

in a different way,

the totalitarian dictatorship that characterize North Korea.

A country I have already visited

and reported on has documentary photographic report.

This work is called Broken Mirror,

and uses a language that mimic a documentary style

in photography.

The basic idea is to insert an alien

and destabilizing element

into the daily life of North Koreans.

I choose to introduce insects and spiders,

which gradually increase in quantity and size

until they take the complete control over the North Koreans.

At some point,

the North Koreans themselves begin to transform

into this giant insects,

and they finally become the creatures they used to fear.

This actually symbolizes their complete submissions.

Generating the images the way I had conceived

and described them with the prompt requires thousands

of attempts and a lot of frustration.

The creative process were largely in the hands

of artificial intelligence.

However, the selection of images was a compromise

between what I wanted to achieve and what I was offered.

I did not always get what I wanted.

Other times, the artificial intelligence

inserted unexpected elements that I chose to keep.

During this process, I realized that the metaphor I had used

did not just represent

the North Korean totalitarian dictatorships,

but it did also represent the technology itself.

In particular, its invasive and controlling nature.

With my work, I therefore exploited the new potential

the artificial intelligence offers

to express a fear I have towards it.

After several months fully immersed in this technology,

I felt a strong need to return

to photographing people s stories.

This new technology,

I think, will be part of my tools I use in the future.

But the quiet, solitary long nights spent

at the computer generating images reminded me why,

at one point in my life,

I set aside my passion for computing

and embrace photography.

I needed to step outside, breath in reality,

and eventually capture these traces with my camera.

Thank you.

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End of slide. Yeah, just a moment.

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