Sustainable Photography?
Terra, The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University, 2-4 July 2025
"Generated Photographs, Ecology and the Extractive Networks of GenAI" at Terra 2025 Summer Conference
The Institute of Photography at Falmouth University, in partnership with the Sustainable Darkroom, have announced a conference in July 2025 on the theme of (un)sustainable photography:
"As we navigate the world of accelerating climate change and collapsing natural systems, we must continue to ask the question:
How do those involved in photography think about their role and their practice?”
More at: https://terrafalmouth.com/Sustainable-Photography
Image: Armelle Skatulski, "Untitled" from Generated Forest series, 2024, generated photograph made with Midjourney using sequential prompting.
This event will bring together those who practice photography, those who teach photography, and those who care about photography. Through presentations, discussions, and workshops, participants will engage in listening, sharing, and a range of practical activities.
2-4 July 2025
Falmouth University,
Penryn, Cornwall, TR10 9FE.
Generated Forest (2024)
For Sustainable Photography? at Falmouth University I will present Generated Forest, a series of ‘generated’ photographs which I produced with the text-to-image GenAI Midjourney with textual prompts made through ChatGPT to speculatively represent the conservation work undertaken by the Bezos Earth Fund in the Congo Basin. The series highlights the twisted circularity of a leader in ‘cloud’ computing undertaking conservation work while deploying GenAI models (Amazon Titan).
The ‘generated’ image is considered as the surface effect of the algorithmic grammar of AI, black-boxed computational operations, and the invisible labour of the prompter. The textual prompts used for the project to generate images are laden with a mythologising tone which is presented ironically, while collage, juxtaposition and mapping are means of recontextualising the generated ‘found object’.
© Armelle Skatulski, 2024
Image: Armelle Skatulski, "Untitled" from Generated Forest series, 2024, generated photograph made with Midjourney using a Chat GPT textual prompt describing the conservation work of the Bezos Earth Fund.
