In 1840, when French painter Paul Delaroche saw his first photograph, he declared: ‘From today, painting is dead!’

And now in 2024, AI and images generated from text prompts raise similar cries of “Photography is dead!’

AI has arrived as a controversial technology just at the time when we have entered ‘The Age of The Image’ where visual images dominate human communication and social media. But does this really mean that photography IS dead? With AI developing a rate none of us can keep up with, is it the end of the lens?

Photography Studies College (Melbourne) Emerging Technologies Convenor, NIc Kocher says:

“AI represents the most revolutionary advancement in image-making since the invention of the camera itself.”

This exhibition explores what authorship means in the visual arts. Our artists are explorers   of imaging platforms and reconstructors of found online imagery. Ironically, the images emerging from the artificial intelligence visual generators (such as Midjourney, DALLE-E2 etc ) that they have used to create their images are all drawn from immense data banks of photographic images and emerge as the result of specific directions conveyed in their written prompts.

So, is it the end – or another beginning?