Photography is having a moment in fine art circles and it could be because of the rise of artificial intelligence, according to a report in The New York Times.
The Times points out that a number of galleries across the United States are putting on photography exhibitions. They include the Place Gallery in Manhattan which is showcasing Irving Penn which runs from November 15 to December 21.
And it’s not just art galleries, the buying and selling of photography is also having a moment. “After at least a decade of focusing almost exclusively on painting, many of the largest and most powerful art dealers are dedicating significant attention and real estate to photography,” The Times writes.
The artist and photographer Trevor Paglen is putting on an exhibit at the Altman Siegel Gallery in San Francisco which focuses on photographs of UFOs. The show explores what is real and what is not. The photographs are all undoctored.
Meanwhile, Canadian photographer Jeff Wall is exhibiting at the Gagosian in New York from November 8, countryman Stan Douglas is having his photos shown in the David Zwirner Gallery, also in New York at the Gladstone Gallery is American artist Carrie Mae Weems’ photos of boarded-up windows in Portland, Oregon.
Emily Bierman, the head of photographs for Sotheby’s auction house, tells The Times that it was only recently that the contemporary art world accepted photography. “People didn’t understand the importance of photography in the contemporary art world,” says Yancey Richardson, an art dealer who specializes in photography.
In the summer of 2023, 35,000 people attended Richard Avendon’s centenary celebration at the Gagosian. The American fashion photographer’s work attracted some of the best crowds in recent years.
The Rise of AI
PetaPixel has documented the effect AI is having on the photo industry. With the technology beginning to supplant the medium, the curator of photography at the Whitney Museum Drew Sawyer tells The Times that physical prints are starting to feel more like fine art objects.
“New tech has made even digital photography seem somewhat romantic and nostalgic,” Sawyer adds.
Paglen says that AI is “removing the assumption of a shared reality” elaborating that people are increasingly not taking images at face value and this paradigm shift could make photography more significant in the art sphere.