speaker-0: Man, I just spilled water on my keyboard. Hang on a second. ⁓

speaker-1: Hot here. Hot every.

speaker-0: Okay, ready? ⁓ no, you're drinking. I'm Jay Fram, that's Bill Silalik.

speaker-1: Pretty good. Does that work for you? That does work. Are you familiar with the Danziger Gallery? founded in 1989 by James Danziger, the Danziger Gallery is a premier fine art photography venue. Thus, why I was listening to Danzig a few minutes ago, just to get myself in the mood. Madison Avenue Gallery ⁓ exhibits at major American and European art fairs, etc. etc. I'm no collector, so I just had seen the name, but that's all I knew. But Danziger is in the news. Sort of. You're familiar with Moonrise Hernandez, New Mexico from our buddy Anzel Adams. So look in your text, you will see Moonrise Hernandez, and then you will see the photograph as of few weeks ago that is on display at the Danziger Gallery, which is an AI generated Moonrise Hernandez, New Mexico. From the prompt, make a realistic Color version of Ansel Adams' iconic Moonrise over Hernandez. Proofed, regenerated, and photoshopped from November 2025 to April 2026, printed by master printer Esteban Mauchi. That is a that is a ⁓ I almost said that's a photograph. It's obviously not a photograph. That is by the artist. Giuseppe Los Shaivo, Los Sha Los Shavo. ⁓ Danziger represents his work. Los Shavo is known for his quote, synthetic photography, digitally reimagined and rendered famous American Southwest scene using 3D rendering and AI tools. And that is like the perfect answer. It's just like So I'm I'm fascinated by this sort of thing because I will admit ⁓ I secretly I mean I okay. ⁓ I secretly like the ⁓ finger in the eye nature of art by people like Richard Prince. Yeah.

speaker-0: Richard Prince is the first thing it reminded me of.

speaker-1: Yeah. So this is the AI version of that. And I have no doubt this artist is a brilliant artist and he has figured out, aha, I can really be provocative here and I can take one of the most famous photographs ever, and I can make an AI-generated image, make a realistic color version of Ansel Adams' iconic moonrise over Hernandez. And And I'm looking at the listing, a photograph of the listing. Well, I mean, who knows? These days, maybe it's an AI generated thing that looks like the photograph. That looks like a photograph of the ⁓ plaque hanging on the wall next to the work. Yeah. And it is a 30 by 40 inch archival pigment print edition of 10, available for you, Jay, at the low, low price of $10,000. Or you can get a 24 by 20, ⁓ 20 by 24.

speaker-0: Wow.

speaker-1: For 6,000 or 24 by 30 for 8,000. But please note prices do not include framing. And I sort of feel like they should include framing, but that's beside the point. I'm so given how much I like the ⁓ yeah, I don't know why the provocative nature of like, ⁓ watch this, watch what I'm gonna do. It's basically trolling, right? ⁓ but there is also something really gross about it, isn't there?

speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, I I mean it my my visceral reaction on seeing that that color photo, that color print right off the bat was just like, ugh, it's really saturated and just just on a ⁓ I was gonna say tactile, but just on a purely on the level of form, I really don't I don't like it because of how it's compared to the original. in my mind. Although I will say, you know, I'm looking like I kind of I kind of like the warm light on the bottom on the buildings and the stuff. Yeah. ⁓ but the sky is just too blue and it's just like, yeah, I don't know. It's ⁓ it's ⁓ but that's all sort of beside the point. it does feel icky and I'm sure that the and there's no permission from the Ansel Adams estate, right?

speaker-1: No, no, I mean certainly not that I have seen. And in fact, what I saw was a comment where the person who posted these photos with the Ansel Adams ⁓ Foundation and said, Hey, I'd love to hear your comment, your thoughts on this. And they have not yet responded, at least that I've seen publicly. ⁓ I think it's the Ansel Adams Trust, it's called. ⁓

speaker-0: Well it's certainly not in the public domain yet.

speaker-1: I didn't even think about that. And ⁓ it it sort of encapsulates ⁓ the whole shtick of AI in one example. Is this art? Is it not art? Is is the idea of doing it art in a way that ⁓ that the work itself is not? I you know, I don't I don't purport to have the answers to these questions. It just seems a little gross to me to ⁓ essentially, Richard prints the photograph, turn it color automatically. Say, you know, I'm gonna tweak it in Photoshop and yada yada yada. ⁓ and then call it a new piece piece of art. It's not. It's ⁓ it's a colorized, it's it's it's the colorization of yeah, it's a hundred percent derivative.

speaker-0: I mean it's not even it's not even like just a colorization the way they colorize old TV shows.

speaker-1: Yeah, and actually that's exactly what I was just thinking. Is the TV movie thing? Do you remember when they started doing that? Was that Turner Classic Movies? I don't know, 30 years ago. It it was people were outraged. Old people like us then were like, How why would you do this? And I sort of get it now. Like it was good before. The the black and white version was was was peak, was was the work of art. Why change it? ⁓ is this the future?

speaker-0: I I mean what you said about trolling, I mean the the the point of the art is the art in this case, like the reason it's in a gallery is because of what it's saying and its comment on the process, right? I mean, isn't so if we give the artist the benefit of the doubt, he's he's making a comment about the ability to do this with AI. Right. He's asking a question. Like this this conversation that we're having is the point. Yeah. I I think I think, right? Is that is that right? Or or or is it? Or is he or is he just sort of shit disturbing? Like is he really just trolling? And that's it's like what does he actually think? You know, it'd be nice to it'd be nice to like hear some artist statement attached or read some artist statement attached.

speaker-1: True. That's a really good news. I haven't found one. In fact, I haven't found I haven't found news coverage of it or requests for statement or you know, I think it's just it's in the it's in the exhibition of this artist's work. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ Danziger Gallery has prominently featured Los Chiavo's reimagined version of the photograph at major art fairs, including the photography show presented by you say iPad, AIPA D. ⁓

speaker-0: Yeah. Interesting. ⁓ you know I've heard of that. I don't know what it is. ⁓

speaker-1: Yeah, I think you're right when you say this conversation is the he's he's he's he's lobbing one into the court of public opinion and saying, What do you think about this? I think.

speaker-0: Does he do this with other photographs? I mean, is he using is he doing this like multiple times across the board?

speaker-1: Let's see if we can find out the the other work of his I've seen seems to be sort of digitally generated original works, right? ⁓ clean and beautiful and interesting in their own way, but not kind of my forte, ⁓ not my thing. But but not without their charms, right? Way more charming. The what it's it's funny. I d I it's hard for me to know looking at this colorized moonrise, how much of my reaction, my gut reaction of ugh. do it is that I know that it was done with AI versus like how would I feel if ten years ago he had exhibited this saying, I went into Photoshop and I hand painted, you know, or digitally painted this original and made it look like this. Would I feel the same way?

speaker-0: I think I would think it was gross.

speaker-1: I think I would think it was gross too.

speaker-0: I would think it was gross in the in a similar way, but the fact that he did it with AI, just sort of creating it out of whole cloth, ⁓ it seems extra extra nothing. It's ⁓ and also it's it's like you could just take you didn't like the AI doesn't even have to know that photograph, although it probably would be able to reference it pretty quickly. But you just take a photo and you just ⁓ throw it in there, right? And you say colorize this in a depending on the tool. ⁓ I I am curious about the process. Like it's a it's a print. So I guess it's it's printed. It's it's up resed. The fact that it's a 30 by 40 print alone is interesting. Like that means that these image generators are getting really powerful because they previously just output, you know web resolution files. Then he takes it and

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: Puts it in Photoshop and does this thing to it. ⁓ I was gonna say it's being shown in a photography context, like at the APAD thing. Yeah. Cause that's troubling.

speaker-1: ⁓ a a photographer I know and admire, Ruben Wu, says on the in the comments here, I saw a lot of AI slopped served by so called reputable galleries in Paris photo in an attempt to be seen as forward thinking and relevant. It just looked desperate. Th that resonates with me, the idea of ⁓ we'll show AI because it's provocative and forward looking.

speaker-0: Because there's so much hype around it. And this is the new this is what photography is. This is where we're heading. This is what it is now.

speaker-1: Yeah, and I just as you and I have spoken about, ⁓ you know, if the camera's not inv it's it's just not my interest, you know. Yeah. ⁓ I'm interested in photography. You know, I'm interested in other art forms separately, but this is not not photography.

speaker-0: I guess this is interesting as as the conversation that it's creating, but it's not what I would call photography.

speaker-1: Yeah, and and I don't know that I have much more to say about it than this is one of those this strikes me as one of those touchstone moments of ⁓ kind of like Richard Prince with the with the Cowboys originally, you know, which was prob probably the first one of those was I would guess in the eighties. So he's been doing it for a long time.

speaker-0: Do you want to talk about specifically what that, you know, assuming that we have listeners, like what what is the Richard what are what is the who is Richard Princeton?

speaker-1: Richard Prince is an artist. I think he was a painter originally. And his biggest claim to fame, I would say, at this point is ⁓ work that he calls Rephotographs. And the most popular series of those was Untitled Cowboys. And he's made those for 30 plus years, I think. And he basically takes old magazines and cuts out Marlborough cigarette ads that used to be a thing in magazines, which also used to be a thing. And

speaker-0: The Marlborough man.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, the Marlboro man. The their their western scenes and ⁓

speaker-0: And there's a specific photographer who photographed a lot of them.

speaker-1: Several. Sam Abel is one. Sam Abel has one of the best photographs ever. of Cowboys. ⁓

speaker-0: The one with the guys yeah, roping a steer and there's like all these s levels. So it's framed by the guys in the foreground and then there's a middle. And then there's a deep background, which is actually the focus of the image. Yeah, it's great.

speaker-1: ⁓ great. Yeah. It's so good.

speaker-0: And you know it was just chaos when he when he shot it.

speaker-1: Such a great photograph. So it's very cool. And and that right there, that feeling we have about that, even if I can't put it into words, that's a thing AI just doesn't make me feel, right? Well

speaker-0: It wasn't in the real world. It wasn't in the physical world. This this

speaker-1: Knowing something real happened matters to me in the context of viewing photographs.

speaker-0: Yeah, that's part of what they mean. Yeah. Yeah. That's part of what they mean, right?

speaker-1: So Richard Prince tears Marlboro man ads out of magazines, photographs them like a copy stand kind of situation, crops out the Surgeon General warning, and then makes giant, ⁓ presumably beautiful prints and sells them in I believe literal millions. I believe one of his untitled Cowboys is in the top ten still of most expensive photographs ever. And I photograph or I interviewed a photographer.

speaker-0: For like millions.

speaker-1: Neil Clausen, probably 2019-ish. He was one of those Marlborough man photographers. And I interviewed him for ⁓ APA. and it's still an article you can read. It's called Reclaiming Untitled Cowboy. And ⁓ so talking to him about it really also helped me get off my own. Like I I appreciate Prince's idea in the sense that I I appreciate the idea of idea as art, which is ultimately what he's doing. ⁓ you know, ⁓ somebody said art is what you can get away with or art is getting away with it. And that's kind of what Prince is doing there.

speaker-0: But millions of dollars though. And it's it's nothing, I mean it's really important to note that there's no there's nothing being added to it. Literally just the straight print of the magazine ad with with text ⁓ cropped out.

speaker-1: Literally nothing. I asked ⁓ mister Clausen, what what's that feel like? And he said, You see you see your your life's work, right? And you worked hard for it and you got up in the morning and you laid in the dirt among the spiders and the insects and you know what it took to make this photograph, and then you see this man copies it and sells it for three million dollars, and you just feel a pit in your stomach and you don't understand. How that works, like how it, how is that fair? And when you hear him saying that, you you kind of get a moment of of putting yourself in that context of like, wait, that that's mine. You're copying my work. Why are you making a literal, a literal fortune on my work? And that seems pretty similar. You could you could you could imagine that same thing happening here if Ansel were alive.

speaker-0: I mean it might happen, still.

speaker-1: True. You know, people always like to say how forward thinking Ansel was, but I I can't imagine him looking at this and going, ⁓ yeah, that's a new piece of art that someone else made, as opposed to a copy of his work. It couldn't in these sorts of discussions, I always these sorts meaning like discussions about transformative works and and and derivatives and that sort of thing. Like the prince work Literally couldn't exist without the Marlborough man work. This literally couldn't exist in any recognizable form similar to it. If ⁓ if Ansel hadn't done Moonrise over Hernandez and you put a prompt saying make a color version of Ansel's Moonrise over Hernandez, you get presumably a blank page, right? It's not like he's he his prompt was even show me a similar image to or show me a desert south. Show me a

speaker-0: No, the fact that it's an exact copy is the point is the point. It that's where its power

speaker-1: And same same goes with Prince and the and I I would I would argue ⁓ that Prince's work is can I photograph a magazine and sell it for a million dollars? Like that action is the work of art. And I think the reason the way he wins in court is by

speaker-0: Has he won all the things in court? Like the photographers have not

speaker-1: Yeah, he doesn't lose. Yeah, he doesn't lose.

speaker-0: It's it's just it's designated as fair use, that it's a common

speaker-1: It's transformative and photographers caught up in the physical transformation. And we look at it and we go, Okay, transformative would need to be I've changed it in some way. I've made it from black and white to color or I've made it ⁓ purple.

speaker-0: No, but that would d yeah. That would definitely not be enough transformation. Right.

speaker-1: So what Prince does, his transformation, and I you never see people write about this, except for moi, if if I may say, is the transformation that he that he does and is the reason he gets away with it, is because he is transforming a commercial use, a magazine ad into art. He is taking it from one realm and putting it in the other, and it is Coincidentally, now that we're on copyright, Lynn Goldsmith, another photographer I've interviewed. Lynn Goldsmith sued the Andy Warhol Foundation because Andy Warhol used her photograph of Prince from like 1982 and painted it and and published it and did all sorts of ⁓ stuff to it and made a lot of money from it. And she said, you can't do that. Well, what the headlines miss is that the That Warhol licensed it from her originally. $400, I believe she was paid. Specific. Yeah. Specifically. To make a limited edition lithograph series. And then they went on, I think after Warhol's death, to make all of these prints and and ⁓ gallery exhibited and sold lithographs that sold for, I believe, hundreds of thousands of dollars each. And then

speaker-0: Yeah, for a specific

speaker-1: She won this lawsuit and she did not win because of that. She won because ultimately some magazine licensed from them the Warhol version of the print of the Prince portrait for use in an editorial context about Prince. And the Supreme Court, like Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said essentially. No, no, no. That's you're invade you're you're you're on the territory of Lynn Goldsmith, editorial portrait photographer now. And the reason Warhol Foundation lost was not because of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fine art prints. That work was permissible in that realm. It was once they ventured back into her domain of editorial portraits that they essentially violated her copyright because that's the idea behind the copyright protection is my ability to earn my living in my field. Right. So yeah, the court would argue her career is not affected by Warhol's foundation making gallery artwork out of it. So the t the transformation in that case was acceptable. And then when it came back into editorial, that's when it was back in her lane. And the court said, No, you can't do that. We got to that because of the transformation thing. So I would argue in this case, back to Danziger and Los Chavo's AI generated moonrise, not transformative, either in venue or in result, you know, colorizing an existing photo. I mean, it's such a huge topic. I don't even know what I think about it, other than my reaction is ⁓ gross. And how's this gonna shake out? I'm curious. Yeah.

speaker-0: Yeah. Will they even bother suing this artist or or the gallery? I I don't know. I'm curious to see the rest of his work. But I guess there's it's such a huge, as you've been saying, it's such a huge topic that it's hard to know where to even sort of grab onto it.

speaker-1: You use AI a little more than I do. ⁓ just in

speaker-0: Yeah, I use I use it as a coach, basically.

speaker-1: And I, while I do have complicated and mixed and varying feelings about it, I generally kind of try to avoid it, sort of out of a f I hate to say philosophical standpoint.

speaker-0: No, it's yeah, it's a p it's almost a political A little bit. You know. Or no, maybe we could c actually more generously call it ethical. You have an ethical problem.

speaker-1: May maybe, maybe. Although while I do have those ethical issues about it stealing copyrighted work and that sort of thing, my main fear with AI is the prospect of a future where in three or five or ten years, literally everything we do runs through the servers of three tech giant companies and then they've just got us where they want us. Kind of the same way that right now everything we do in the marketing of our businesses and other businesses all runs through essentially YouTube, Meta, or Google, right? They've they've they've got the the world covered in terms of ⁓ you want to find new customers? We're how you do that. We're the only way you do that.

speaker-0: But does you not getting to take advantage of this arguably pretty useful tool do anything to to affect that? I guess that's the kind of cynical way that I come down on it.

speaker-1: Hundred percent. A hundred percent. So I think it's more just like I feel a little bit like ⁓ how much shit goes in the punch bowl before the punch bowl is is shit. You know what I mean? Like, well there's just a little over on that side. If I drink from this side, it'll be okay. I'm yeah, I think I'm ethical is is too too generous a word. It really is just more that I it just kind of grosses me out in a lot of ways. So I I do I but I'm not I'm trying not to bury my head in the sand. And so I do try it periodically for things. Well what

speaker-0: What grosses you out? What grosses you out about using say like like you know, for example, my my my Claude AI, like, you know, marketing assistant, for example, is sort of my favorite use of of Claude. But tell me what grosses you out about about that use of it.

speaker-1: The abdication of the human from the process, whatever the process is, whether it's writing or photography or thinking or ideating. I I think I think about a lot of things as as is this my art or is this just getting shit done? Busy work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the times I do use it, it's in the getting shit done category, right? Like you've you've said before an example of running a a letter through Claude that you were going to send to a client and saying, Hey, how does this read? And Claude said, ⁓ I'd change this and this and this. That is incredibly practical, useful, and helpful. And I get that. And I would argue that your original email to your client, there was there was no art in that, right? There was no there was nothing to be tainted. It was a transactional ⁓ collection of letters and words and things. But even the writing that I do for art and math or or myself or that to me is is under the umbrella of art, right? I'm not doing it, it's not transactional, it's not about a result only, it's about the process and my part in it. And so that's the stuff where I really don't like the idea of abdicating my responsibility and turning it over to AI. So that's the part I'm truly protecting. ⁓ and so then when I Don't use it for the other stuff. It's almost like a silent protest of like, well, let's not, let's not add to add to the pile, I guess. Let's not add to the mountain of millions and billions of uses. And so I looked and I think there are seven billion searches a day. My six in a month, a literal drop drop in the bucket. So I wasn't too worried about it. It's not an ethical line I'm drawing. It's more of like, it feels like Once I go down this hallway, I can't go back. So I'm just being really careful about going down this hallway.

speaker-0: I think there is a real risk to letting it do ⁓ my thinking for me. And I I try not to ⁓ abdicate. I I try not to to to get too far down that path just because it's the path of least resistance. I mean, it really is difficult to sit and stare at a blank page to write something that I need to do. It is really difficult to sit and stare at a blank page. That's one of the hard things to do in life. That's a hard way to be creative. and ⁓ an AI and LLMs can make that easier. I do agree with you that there's a real risk to that. And ⁓ just listened to a good interview with Cal Newport, which you should listen to ⁓ on offline recently. You know who he is probably. He he wrote the book Deep Wor Deep Work. And anyway, he was saying he was echoing something along those lines that AI should be used, this kind of AI that we're talking about should be used for for busy work and things that to save you time and so on. But if you're taking away the difficulty in life. in in creative output, in meaningful work, then that's a problem. And that that part of you will atrophy. ⁓ and I and I mean I'd argue that there's even something about a business email to a client that there is some creative aspect to it. And you are probably sanding off the edges of what it's like to be you. I mean, one thing AI does with my emails is it's like, ⁓ you're so self-deprecating. Like, ⁓ that sounds just like you but it it will it will kind of encouraged me not to be self-deprecating, not to be, not to make jokes and stuff like that. So if that's something that's working for me, that would not be good, that it sands off those edges. ⁓ on the other hand, you know, my wife also says that ⁓ that I'm, you know, too I comment about the things I'm talking about when it comes to talking about my creative work, that I'm like too almost bashful about it. You know, like I was writing this email about how I approach architecture, shooting architecture to a potential architecture client. And I had things in there like, ⁓ God, you know, and I was like, I do this and I pay attention to this. And I, you know, I think this is the how I'm interpreting meaning and watching the sun move across a room. And then I had a line in there that's that was that was like, boy, that sounds really woo-woo. Anyway, what I really do, and Jackie said, Jackie said, why are you, why are you saying that? Like just just own being a just own being a creative professional and saying, you know Interpretive things. ⁓ but anyway, I really

speaker-1: Strongly to that though. Side note, like that's yeah, that's because it feels because we're operating in a world where it's not w which is kind of this whole issue about AI is I have only recently come to terms with the idea of calling myself an artist, but that's what it is.

speaker-0: And Yeah, it feels pretentious.

speaker-1: But it's yeah, but it's not. It's it's it's and it's more about the ⁓ it's not as much about the work we're doing as it is, I think, about the things we value and the things things we want to put in the world. I've also been thinking in the context of AI, in the context of artist or artist thinking, this is an oversimplification, but I when I when I venture into LinkedIn periodically, because that's where my corporate clients are theoretically hanging out. ⁓ I'm constantly struck by the the like the pro AI, like, hey we need to generate a result. We generated it in an hour, isn't that great? The future's exciting.

speaker-0: Yeah, it's deafening in there, the the buzz about AI.

speaker-1: And I and I have oversimplified my thinking about it to there it there are there are kind of these two brains. There's the artist brain who's like, well, yeah, but you missed all the good part. And then there's the I've been calling it engineer brain, but maybe it's business brain or and and that's that's not meant to necessarily even be derogatory. It's just a different way of thinking about what you're trying to do. And that that vague LinkedIn person is trying to get to a result, which is an image or a sentence or a collection of words that that describe a thing. It's it's a it's a widget for them. It's a it's a cog in a machine. They just need the piece and the AI generated the piece and there you go. And the artist mind goes, well yeah, but what's it mean? colorized AI generated moonrise over Hernandez is not the same thing as Black and white Ansel Adams la last light of the November afternoon black and white photograph of the real place. Like they're just they look identical save for color versus black and white, but they are in fact seismically fundamentally different, right? Like they're just not the same thing to the artist mind. To the engineer mind, it's well yeah, this one's color, that one's black and white, and thus ends the differences between the two. And I don't even know that I have the words to articulate why those differences matter, which is why I fall back on it's I think it's just my the way my brain sees it versus the way someone else's brain sees it.

speaker-0: Are we artists? Not when we not when we do personal work and and and make a book, but in our in our normal day-to-day work, your your answer is sure.

speaker-1: Sure. I have come to, boy. I have come to a Rick Rubinized way of thinking about this, which is sort of like art is a way of being. And so if you are approaching anything you do as an artist or with an artful mind, or you just think of it as your art, then I think it is your art. And it that's true if it's you're making ceramic coffee mugs or you're writing poetry or you are ⁓ making photographs. I do think fundamentally something changes when it is a commercial assignment and someone says, Jay, I have constructed this building and I would like you to photograph it for me and do it beautifully and bring your artist's eye to it. Right. You that that was not that was not your concept or you know, and oftentimes it's not even your you don't have full control over how you want it to be. You need it to be a thing that serves their needs.

speaker-0: Yeah, I fear that I'm not saying anything when I when I make c ⁓ c assignment work, you know, and haven't done a whole lot of work. I mean, I did a lot when I was younger of work that I thought felt said something. ⁓ but I've done it a lot less recently. And so yeah, I think I'm uncomfortable with that artist designation. I I want to Yeah, I think part of me feels like well, I mean I do creative work and I feel animated in the same way that I think an artist feels animated. I I I have some of the same desires and energies, but yeah, I feel unc uncomfortable with that label sometimes.

speaker-1: Well, and I get that certainly in the context of this commercial work that we do, because fundamentally, like you said, if you're not if you're not saying anything beyond look at the lovely surface on this building or ⁓ look at this person, it's hard to argue that that is art. And so I'm not arguing that that is art. I think I am arguing that maybe the way you conduct your business is part of that artist's mindset and artist approach, right? Because ⁓ the way the ways I see this manifest are like the business person, again, oversimplification. I'm not casting aspersions on artists or business people or engineers or whatever, but the true business case for photographing a glamping setup in the Oregon Woods is we need these images that show the place in a ⁓ appealing aesthetic and ⁓ make it look certain way that appeals to a certain type of clientele. It's all, it's all very sort of well-defined outcomes, right? And that's not typically the way art is made, right? That is ⁓ the business need is for a widget. And this widget happens to be a beautiful photograph or a beautiful image. And that's why that business way of thinking about it might say, ⁓ well if I can shortcut the $20,000 photo shoot and go right to the AI output, I've gotten the widget. But the artist way of approaching it that you take to that assignment, even though you can't bill necessarily for the extra 40 hours of retouching you put in, right? A ⁓ good business person would be like, You didn't bill for that. Don't eff and do it. Let it go. An artist goes, I don't care that I can't get paid for this portion of it. I need it to meet my standard. I need it to be excellent. Yeah. And I and and you do things that do not make good business sense, as I do, as many of our colleagues do, because we are thinking like an artist in terms of what we are putting out into the world. And so even if the the work itself is not quote unquote art, I think it's got to do with a way of thinking and being and doing the things that we are doing.

speaker-0: Bringing up the the fact that there's a goal in mind and it's not purely about process, you're referring to you're you're making a reference to an image I did recently last summer of a of a glamping, like beautiful tent at a resort in the woods, and it recently was published on the cover of a magazine in Oregon. And it would have been much easier had that client just wanted to have that result for them to kind of like take a few snapshots of the tent and say to an AI generator, make a make a beautiful image of the make a beautiful image of this glowing at in the dark and put stars in the sky with the trees in the background and make it as close to this actual place as possible. I mean that would have been probably pretty quick, right? And also completely predictable in terms of the outcome. So what's so what's the difference? Why not do that? Why are we thinking that people should should hire us as as humans and quote unquote artists to take all the trouble and pay all the big fees that we have to have just to just to make a living, not even to be well paid, ⁓ to go and do that instead of just you know, making something that is completely predictable and controllable.

speaker-1: My answer to that is be is still a business case, actually, because the people who need to be appealed to are are the people with an aesthetic and a sensibility that will respond to a quote unquote real photograph of this high-end, presumably expensive luxury glamping experience. And those people would be actively ⁓ dissuaded slash turned off by an AI shortcut version of that, or even just a cheap handmade illustration of that, or a cheap snapshot of it, or all the other ways it could be done, that would not appeal to the demographic that that needs to appeal to. And that's the justification.

speaker-0: So what you're saying is that part of the value of it is the meaning that's created by the fact of it being a photograph of a real thing in the

speaker-1: A hundred percent. And in fact, I think going forward that's the only reason to do it. Right. There's a I recently said to someone, There's a reason we hire wedding photographers and not wedding illustrators.

speaker-0: What about cars? What about shoes?

speaker-1: ⁓ well so, you know, I I think that's I think it's I think it could go either way, ultimately.

speaker-0: I mean there used to be beautiful, maybe still is, beautiful car ads. You know, as one of the highest paid forms of photography, I think still is. And also, ⁓ you know, TV ads. Yeah. Even even more gorgeous.

speaker-1: Well, imagine now when TV goes away, like print publishing went away, and will there be TV ads anymore? I I think in the long run, the shoe ad or the car ad is going to be a photograph versus an AI, depending on the audience. And I think I think if it here is here, here's sort of a predicament that I think we've gotten ourselves into, ourselves being commercial photographers. If an image right now is so overly edited as to be essentially a ⁓ digital composite, a digital illustration, a photo illustration, a a computer generated image that incorporates elements of photography. I think those are so far down the road away from realism that those are actually more susceptible to AI replacement, right? Because we have said

speaker-0: AI imagery has such a sheen to it. It has such a is such an uncanny poly.

speaker-1: Well, but it but even imagine w once it's perfect, right? Once it's perfect, the only difference is the quote unquote real and the like you said at the beginning of this, that's part of the meaning. So if the meaning doesn't matter as it maybe doesn't, if you have spent a quarter of a million dollars shooting and retouching and compositing and making images that nobody reads right now, as ⁓ that is a photograph. It looks like a Right.

speaker-0: You often can't tell. I I feel real tension. I feel a real tension in this w in my architectural work when it comes to perfecting images, because generally the client wants it perfected to a certain extent. Light switches remove like light ⁓ like ⁓ electrical outlets removed, can lights in the ceiling, vents, things like that. I mean, that's just a sort of basic, but I mean it's not just the client. Like I want that stuff cleaned out of there too. Stray branches, stray people, but You're perfecting it.

speaker-1: Is it Wabisabi, the the beauty and imperfection? Wabi Sabi is a Japanese aesthetic and philosophical worldview that finds beauty, elegance, and serenity in imperfection, impermanence, and simplicity. As I understand it, that goes back to ⁓ yeah, you're right. Yep. And the irony of me reading the AI overview of Google's result there is not lost on me. But ⁓ I always think of like I think Wabi Sabi was like the you would you would make a a a ceramic bowl and then you would

speaker-0: Gemini says.

speaker-1: purposely put a little dent in the rim. ⁓ and I thought I maybe learned at some point that it originated with the idea of, although if it's a Buddhist idea, maybe it's not God, but that that only nature makes perfection and humans are incapable of of anything but imperfection. So lean into it kind of thing. That to but I th the my point is I think that wabi sabi ideal is going to become more in vogue because it's going to be symbolic of human and it's going to matter to the people that it matters to.

speaker-0: Maybe I could still take out the electrical outlets, but ⁓ make some strategic wabi sabi ⁓ addition or, you know, strategy that is ⁓ aesthetically pleasing, basically.

speaker-1: I mean, this is this is the goal. We have to figure this out over the next months and years, hopefully. We you know, I wonder if this conversation will sound silly in ten years because it's all shaken out. And right now, looking forward at it though, we don't know how it's gonna go. Continuous Agitation is produced by Jay Fram at Bill Swalik. Music by Moby Grattis. Like the show and write a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Follow Jay on Instagram at J Fram. That's J-A-Y-F-R-A-M. Follow Bill on Instagram and threads at Suwalik. That's S-A-W-A-L-I-C-H. Read Bill's newsletter at artandmath.substack.com. Write to us with questions, comments, and effusive praise at J at Jfram.com or Bill at Sawalik.com. Thanks for listening to Continuous Agitation. See you soon.