The prevalence of generative AI has sparked a number of debates in the art community, but now a gallery is trying to address some of those questions by placing photography and “promptography” together in one exhibition. RIVALS – Photography vs. Promptography is a new exhibition at a museum in Berlin, Germany that seeks to address the limits and possibilities of both conventional photographs and machine-generated imagery.
The exhibition sets out to define both the strengths and differences of photography and promptography inside the traditional space for debating artwork: a museum. Held at the Guelman und Unbekannt Gallery in Berlin as part of the European Month of Photography and in cooperation with Photo Edition Berlin, the exhibit includes works from 18 photographers and 18 generative AI artists.
RIVALS is set to address questions around what curators call the rapidly evolving relationship between photography and AI. Two artists that went viral, one for winning a photography competition with an AI image and one for winning an AI competition with a photograph are a key part of that discussion. Boris Eldagsen, who won the creative category in the Sony World Photo Awards in 2023 with an AI-generated image, and Miles Astray, a photographer that won an award in the AI category of the 1839 Awards last year are among the artists represented in the gallery.
Eldagsen, who is also the curator, says that the show “works as a toolbox that the photography and promptography community can use and develop to further differentiate the strength of each medium.”
The show details photography as an interaction between light, time and matter, while calling AI creatives “directors and conductors” crafting images from text and “one’s own knowledge and experience.”
The exhibition uses structured themes as it compares how the strengths of photography and promptography differ. For example, the Photography as a School of Seeing side counteracts with the AI The Invention of New Bodies, where creators create physically impossible bodies meant to convey an emotion. The Photo as a Historical Document contrasts with No Humans Have Been Harmed in the Making when animals and people are depicted in positions that would have been physically harmful to capture with an actual camera.
Eldagsen says that curators haven’t yet addressed some of those essential questions about photography and AI. “I think that photo festivals and institutions have an obligation to their audience to clarify the relationship between photography and promptography,” he said. “Curators are not yet fulfilling this task. That's why I put together an exhibition that provides answers to these important questions: What is the strength of photography that AI cannot replace? What can AI do that photography can't?”
The exhibition runs through March 31, with a selection of the images on display at the European Month of Photography website.
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