No, AI-Generated Images Aren’t Photographs
But they’re still art. Here’s why.
As a professional news and travel photographer, I’ve taken nearly one million photographs over my career to date.
I’ve photographed protests, rallies, concerts, births, homelessness, and udon soup, to name just a few subjects. I’ve taken photos on $5,000 mirrorless cameras from Leica, $2 film cameras from the 1940s, and everything in between.
All that’s to say that I know photos. So when the New York Times posed a provocative question in a recent article, I had strong feelings about it.
Their question? “Are AI images photographs?”
My answer? Absolutely not.
What Makes a Photo?
Photography requires two components, one technical and one conceptual.
The first is light. Fundamentally, a photograph is a moment of light, captured, fixed, and frozen forever.
The word “photography” literally means “drawing with light,” and as a photographer, you become exquisitely sensitive to it. I notice light wherever I go — the intensity, the color temperature, the angles.
Humans respond emotionally and intuitively to light, often without realizing it. A portrait taken outdoors under the warm…
