Hi Boris, you are an eclectic visual maker. In recent years you have explored the frontier of the so-called "post-human" through the pioneering use of AI technologies. What attracted you to this frontier? What still holds you back in this research? What significant discoveries do you think you have made through these tools?

Boris Eldagsen (BE): I have always been attracted to the human from an existential, philosophical-psychological perspective. You can't define the post-human without knowing what is human. In 2018, I met Brazilian performance artists who were creating new bodies and new organs with latex and prostheses. I was intrigued to find out why. In the process, I discovered that there was often a personal traumatic experience behind it, which the new body was meant to leave behind. Three years after the collaboration with the performance artists, in which some videos were created, I started working with AI image generators. AI also works with the “human condition", the image treasure of many people, in which their feelings, experiences, disorders are expressed. Philosophically said: AI has internalised the primordial ideas in the Platonic sense and understood the archetypes of the collective unconscious with C.G.Jung.

© Boris Eldagsen from the series "AMBIPHILIA", 2022-ongoing

Video: “UNYTING (the past of the future)” featuring Aun Helden, 1-channel 4K video-installation, 06:34 mins loop, 2019

A recurring issue in AI talks includes the distinction between “fake” and “real”. In a previous interview you wrote that it will become even more difficult to distinguish. Quote: "At some point, no one will assign a “reality content” to a photograph. Photography will become another form of painting". In your perspective, what are the political implications, and the real impacts in public opinion, but also in the collective conscience.

BE: Philosophically, there has never been "one" reality, each person is trapped in their own perception. The naïve promise of reality in photography therefore did not interest me as an artist, instead my creative journey had a psychological approach, it went inwards. That's why in the 30 years that I photographed, I never documented, never made images. I worked to transform what was in front of the camera into a timeless psychological symbol. In this respect, working with AI is for me a logical continuation of this journey inwards, I work from my imagination.

Nevertheless, I am concerned with the reality content as a citizen of a democratic state who wants to protect this democracy from attempts at manipulation. Like every tool that humanity has invented, AI will be used for good and for ill. AI image generators allow any 8-88 year old to produce fake documentary images within seconds and flood social media channels with them. "Real photojournalism" will perish in this. Democratic society will find it harder and harder to first agree on a factual basis on which positions can then be exchanged and compromises found. We will sink in a tsunami of "alternative facts". As a citizen, I care about this and unfortunately, I cannot offer a solution to this problem. A positive seal of approval for photojournalism, modelled on the World Press Photo Award, can strengthen photojournalism - if all media commit to it and establish a common set of rules. However, it cannot stop the flood of false pictures. And this flood will exceed the number of "real" pictures. The wet dream of autocrats and conspiracy theorists has come true.

© Boris Eldagsen from the series "SELFIESFROM MY AMYGDALA", 2022

Your art-work “The Electrician” recently won Sony World Photography Awards 2023. How do you think AI is impacting competitions in general?

BE: AI image generators enable people without photographic training to produce "photo-like" images that they could never have made otherwise. Therefore, the competitions will be flooded with AI-generated images. The competitions should have changed their rules already this winter. But they didn't. That's why I applied three times with my picture, to hack the system and see how far I can get. Three times I was among the finalists, and now I won. Each time I told the organisers that it was an AI picture. Each time they tried to keep quiet about it. Sam with SWPA. It would have been better if, after pointing out this weakness, the organisers had taken a stand and explicitly included or excluded AI images. I suggested twice to Sony to use this as a starting point for an open debate, and got no response. After pressuring them the third time, they offered an interview for their blog, which is a start. Let’s take this further.

© Boris Eldagsen, “The Electrician” from the series "PSEUDOMNESIA", 2022-ongoing, courtesy Photo Edition Berlin

You wrote that it is important to realise that "the photographic" as a visual language has separated itself from its source and has a life of its own - as AI-generated images. You also mentioned that it is important to separate "the photographic" and "photography" as different entities. Could you expand the meaning of the underlying vocabulary, and your assumptions?

BE: AI image generators have been trained with countless photos of different genres and quality. This is the medium of "photography". The AI recognises structures in it, recognises what photos have in common that were shot with a certain camera or film or by the same photographer. And it can generate new images from this structural knowledge, in any desired direction. It now works with "the photographic" as its visual language and no longer needs "photography".

© Boris Eldagsen from the series "HUNGER", 2022 

There is an increasingly lively debate on AI within the photo community. Positions are sometimes conflicting. There are those who embrace the potential of these emerging technologies and those who are somewhat reluctant. All of this is normal when it comes to dealing with the introduction of new tools. Undoubtedly this liveliness broadens the horizons of the debate and animates new awareness. What is your view on the debate in general?

BE: I welcome the debate and try to bring it to a higher level and accelerate it where I can. In Germany, the photo scene calls me either the "godfather of AI" or the "firebug", depending on your affinity or dislike. I am a member of the oldest German photo association, the DFA (Deutsche Fotografische Akademie), which sees itself as an association of photo artists. Since 2016, as "Head of Digital", I have been responsible for our digitalisation and the "digital dialogue", where we discuss artistic photography in different online formats. I am invited as a consulting expert by the Association of German Photojournalists as well as by hobby photographers’ communities, photo editors or universities.

Then I am a member of the AI working group of “Deutscher Fotorat”. Representatives of all German photo associations, including professional photographers, architectural photographers, advertising photographers, photojournalists, photo artists, etc., meet in this umbrella association. By April, we will each try to develop our own position papers and work out an intersection in the Fotorat. In this way, we want to be a point of contact for politicians.
I know the hardships of my colleagues and understand their existential fears. But I am far more concerned about the demise of photojournalism in an avalanche of fake documentary images than I am about the collapse of advertising photography. We need photojournalism as a pillar of democracy.

© Boris Eldagsen from the series "AMBIPHILIA", 2022-ongoing

You use contemporary evolutions, or rather those aimed at the future, to reflect on the past, on memory. As in the "Fake memories" series which recovers an image aesthetic from the 1940s. Compared to a past in which images were made to last in some way, to resist time and preserve memories, we are now faced with an instantaneous, liquid memory which tends to be quickly removed/forgot. How is the role of images changing in relation to memory in a hyper-technological driven society?

BE: I use AI to produce images that I could not photograph myself. Not even with my 30 years of experience as a photographic artist.
No one can yet estimate why this new wave of image flood will have an impact. But I think that the viral “fake documentary images” of Trump's arrest made on 21.3.2023 with Midjourney 5 could probably be taken at face value for people in 2123.

© Boris Eldagsen from the series "TRAUMAPORN", 2022-ongoing

"Losing the mind". It's easy, just wear a 3d helmet to understand how engaging and dazzling the use of these technologies can be. A sort of panacea. If the algorithms of social media already give us back comfortable and mediated relationships, we can only imagine what it could mean to access a customized virtual reality, which pleasantly releases our impulses and frees the field from feelings of guilt, frustrations, rejections. Life is like a video game. There is also an intriguing "schooling" section among your works. Can you tell us about it?

BE: "THE SCHOOLS" are video works from the years 2002-12, each of which revolves around a theme that is approached meditatively. There is the video installation "THE SCHOOL OF TEARS (weeping song)" in which you can watch three young women weeping for 13 minutes. They start and end gently. It is the best watched at night! I made this work at a time when I had no tears left to cry myself after the death of my father and a friend's attempted suicide followed by a coma.

There is "THE SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION" with the now world-famous German actress Sandra Hüller (the film "Toni Erdmann", in which she played the leading role, was nominated for an Oscar, she herself has won just about every film award you can win in Germany). The video is intended as a night-time window projection. Sandra comes to the window with a piece of paper, which she presses on the windowpane as a message. But it is impossible to read what is written on it. She plays this process three times, with different framing, as a child wanting attention, as a woman saying goodbye, as a hostage. Communication gone wrong three times as a great show.

Video:
THE SCHOOL OF TEARS (Weeping Song), 3-Channel Video installation, 4:3 PAL DVD, 13 mins loop, 2003

As for the debate on AI, what are three aspects you would like to hear more about? What do you think is left to understand?

BE: AI is a knowledge amplifier, it works with your technical, art historical knowledge - plus your imagination. Those who know more and bring skills with them can get more out of it. In this sense, AI does not stand for artificial intelligence, but “augmented intelligence” (quote from Prof. Peter Kabel).

AI can be a craft, a skill, an art. When you virtuously combine techniques and platforms according to their strengths, working out a complex workflow, the personal signature and skill of an artist becomes apparent. Anyone can let go of the reins and let Midjourney produce a good image with a click. It's the same here as in photography. But finding a new visual language, a reproducible formula, requires knowledge, experience, the joy of experimentation. If you want to try it out for yourself, send me an email, I offer regular online workshops.
The photography scene needs to reposition itself and face the fact that not photography itself, but AI is defining the future of the medium.

© Boris Eldagsen from the series "AMBIPHILIA", 2022-ongoing

Boris Eldagsen (website)