Why Human Authorship Still Matters in Photography and Why AI Does Not Frighten Me

Photography is not defined by resemblance. It is defined by consequence.

At its most rigorous, a photograph is the material resolution of a real-world event. Light interacts with matter. Time is embedded into a surface. A set of conditions is constructed, encountered, or endured. The image is what remains.

This understanding sits within a long lineage. From the vanitas paintings of the Dutch Golden Age to the dramatic use of light in Caravaggio, the image has never been neutral. It has always been the result of conditions; physical, temporal and philosophical all brought into alignment.

´Turned from heavens doors´, 2012

What is now described as “image generation” operates outside of this structure. It produces outputs that resemble photographs, but are not dependent on an event, being resolved computationally rather than physically.

This distinction is not technical. It is ontological.

Within my own practice, this condition is non-negotiable. Each work is constructed as a physical event, often within controlled bodies of water where light, liquid, and subject are brought into unstable alignment. The resulting photograph is not composed in post-production, but resolved in the moment of exposure. It is the sole material outcome of that event having ever taken place.

The question is not whether such systems can produce convincing images. They clearly can. The question is whether authorship still resides in the act of making, or whether it has been displaced into the act of prompting.

Authorship, in photography, implies responsibility. To construct an image is to make decisions that have consequence. Choices of material, duration, exposure, and method shape the work not only visually, but physically. They determine what the image is, not simply how it appears.

´Cymatic plate 0162´, 2022

This position is not theoretical. It has been consistent within my practice: in a letter to Andrei Tolstoy, I wrote:

“The only strange thing about my practice is that I only want to produce this kind of photograph, and only this way. It can be done in other ways, but it would not be the same; not at all. Through darkroom or digital manipulation of some kind, but this does not appeal to me.

I have no desire to manipulate anything other than these liquid mechanics; if I used these other methods, tricks would occur to me and I would be able to repeat them endlessly. To me that would be horrific, and the work no good.

The scene is there, created underwater; now I want to see the places it will go, new and unrepeatable. It appeals to me to be able to handle the work like this, not knowing what is coming.”

In recent works such as Cymatic Water & Light (2022–ongoing), resonance itself becomes the structuring force of the image. Sound, liquid, and light interact to produce forms that appear computational, yet are generated entirely through physical processes. What is recorded is not an effect applied to an image, but a condition that existed.

resonance recorded as structure

Paul Carey-Kent has noted that these works sit in dialogue with painting, recalling “the scraped canvases of Gerhard Richter,” where process remains visible and the image carries the trace of its own formation. This is not resemblance, but equivalence of condition, the image as the residue of an action.

Gerhard Richter, Abstract Painting (726), 1990
Oil on canvas. Process as residue.

In the absence of a physical event, authorship becomes diffuse. The image no longer carries the trace of its own making. It becomes difficult to distinguish between intention and outcome, between construction and synthesis.

This is not a rejection of technology. It is a question of where meaning is located.

As Walter Benjamin observed, the work of art has historically been tied to its presence in time and space — its singular existence. Remove that condition, and something fundamental is altered. The image may persist, but its grounding shifts.

If the photograph is understood as evidence of an encounter between light, material, and time, then its value lies in that encounter. It lies in the fact that something took place, and that the image is inseparable from that occurrence.

Roland Barthes described the photograph as carrying the force of “that-has-been.”

´All Icons Are False plate 0001´, 2017

Without an event, that condition collapses. The image no longer points back to a moment. It exists only in relation to its own construction.

The implications extend beyond aesthetics. They affect how works are understood, collected, and preserved. A photograph that is the result of a physical process carries a chain of causality. It can be located within its own making.

An image generated without such a process exists differently. Its origin is not a moment, but a system. It resists the same forms of accountability.

This is also why each work is held as a singular object. The photograph is not infinitely repeatable without loss of meaning, because it is tied to a specific event. Its form, scale, and material presence are part of that authorship.

´Swarm plate 0813-021´, 2013

Photography remains a discipline defined by its relationship to the physical world. Its strength lies in its constraints: the need for light, for time, for material, for presence.

In a moment where images can be produced without friction, the significance of those that require it becomes clearer.

AI does not threaten this position. It clarifies it.

Human authorship is not a romantic ideal. It is what anchors the image to a reality beyond itself.

The photograph, at its most precise, is the trace of something having occurred.