In August 2022, an American video game designer won first prize at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition, for a work generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Predictably, his win went viral. “AI won an art contest, and artists are furious,” wrote CNN, on September 3. In an editorial published on September 4, a New York Magazine photo editor asked, “Will DALL·E the AI artist take my job?”

Here's another question: is AI art art? That's something I'm still working out.

Here's what I know for sure: art's not dead. As a photographer, I'm fascinated to see how text-to-image models recreate photographic processes and aesthetics. My recent work with AI, Still Life, playfully challenges the photographic canon. Even as born-digital works, these images mimic the materiality of analogue photographs, from Polaroids to tintypes and cyanotypes.

Read more about my process on DALL·Eance: art criticism for the Extremely Online.