Ruminating on Camilla Urrego's exhibition “What We Call Real”
Walking through the gallery of images I am struck by two alternating experiences, the photographs upon the wall, and the question they pertain. The exhibition in question is a collection of photographies by Camila Urrego, displayed at Fotografiens Hus. The gallery's physical being only constitutes a fraction of the experience and one’s impression of it, in addition, the exhibition is led by an ideological and philosophical debate; as the exhibition's name points towards, we are asked to reconsider “What We Call Real”. With the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent times, there has been a growing debate surrounding the bounds of what it means for something to be, or not to be art.
The photographs have motifs akin to modern advertisements, personally I think they have a likeness to car or perfume ads with their anonymous backgrounds, high resolution, and intensive poses and glances. They appear to be divided into two aesthetic themes, one that features the cold atmosphere, ice, and leather, and the other which is softer and lighter, and more abstract in its expression. The photographs are accompanied with description of the exhibition which may, for many like myself, recontextualise our mode of seeing and relating to them. As the description enlightens the viewer onto: the photographs are constructed utilising AI as well as more traditional photographic technologies. At the same time, the photographs appear to be somewhat unrelated to the provided description; The description communicates its ideological and abstract objective, which creates a gap between the object and its meaning. The text does not address the images directly or their process, which is a focal point of the exhibition.
Discussions of copyright, artistic integrity, and autonomy of artificially constructed art are central to the debate of AI produced art, and thus we are left wondering how the artist maintains that AI possesses the ability of extending our creativity, as opposed to borrowing it from others. In signing the photographs Camilla Urrego creates a physical mark of authority and ownership over the works, which does invite the question on which grounds she can claim this work to be hers? The photographs bear resemblance to existing art, there are intelligible themes we may trace through the images, the same face reappears throughout the exhibition, and yet we do not know how the photographs were constructed. In lamenting AI as an extension of creativity we seek to understand AI as a productive force, which has capacity to develop and contribute to the art. As observers, we remain in the dark on her creative processes which challenges our ability to see integrity in the artwork. Therefore, we may be reduced to the conversation we have with her project ideologically, in the debate that is mobilised, as opposed to practically, how Urrego contributes to it.
In leaving the physical space of the exhibition I am left to wonder what makes these images aid us to question of what is real; is it their existence themselves? Though it is an interesting way of opening up a space for critical thought, the exhibition itself appears abstracted from its own medium. Photographs were a problematic medium in their inception due to challenging our notion of reality. Now, using AI as a tool for constructing photographs is a subsequent issue, extending upon the photographs capacity to portray reality. The question is two-fold, may an AI-edited photograph image still be considered photography, and are these photographs an expression of what is real? With the burning topic of AI and art I seek an understanding of the relation between the photographic medium and its debate. These debates in and of themselves pertain to many boundaries such as how we are to define photography, which the exhibition only takes a mute standpoint on.