From time to time I come across a great photography quotation online, good enough to share. But I like to double check. That’s just the way I am. But nine times out of ten there’s no reference. So, copy and paste, search. Up pop twenty websites all with the same quotation. Turns out nine times out of ten was too optimistic. There’s no reference anywhere, just a bunch of websites quoting each other.
I’m sure the people who compile these websites do so in good faith, but if they are just copying an unreferenced quote from some other website with the unreferenced quote there’s no way to know if the quotation is accurate, or even genuine. There’s nothing to stop anyone making up a quotation, attributing it to a particular photographer and pushing it out there in the sure and certain knowledge that it will eventually get picked up and added to the canon.
Then I thought, why bother even making it up? I can just ask an AI chatbot. So I did.
I picked two popular AI powered chatbots, Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. I entered the following message:
Write a fifty-word quotation on the meaning of photography in the style of [enter name here].
For the names I selected six well established photographers whose work is widely available, who have given multiple interviews over the years, and with whose work and commentary I am familiar: Daido Moriyama, Martin Parr, Don McCullin, Bruce Gilden, Andreas Gursky and Joel Meyerowitz.
Here are the results, together with a representative image from each of the photographers. ChatGPT’s responses are in italic, Gemini’s in bold.
Daido Moriyama
‘In the dance of light and shadow, photography reveals the hidden melodies of existence, echoing the transient rhythms of life's enigma. Through the lens, reality emerges as a fleeting dream, where every frame captures the eternal whispers of the ephemeral, echoing the soul's longing for perpetual revelation.’
‘City sprawls, shadows bleeding into neon. Grainy reality, a fleeting kiss of the shutter. Beauty in the broken, truth in the blurred rush. This is the city's pulse, the soul I capture in the fleeting silver frame.’
Martin Parr
‘Photography is the ultimate mirror of our eccentricities, a vivid tapestry woven with the threads of mundane marvels. In the banality of everyday scenes, it uncovers the absurdity that colours our lives, immortalizing the quirkiness of human existence with unapologetic honesty and a touch of wry humour.’
‘Sunburnt tourists crammed on a beach like sardines in a tin. Fights over deckchairs, chips stuck to grinning kids - that's what holidays are really about, isn't it? Photography? It's not about airbrushing reality, it's showing the whole messy, sunburnt package deal.’
Don McCullin
‘Photography is a testament to the human condition, a relentless pursuit of truth amidst chaos. It bears witness to the raw, unfiltered essence of life's trials and triumphs, etching into memory the silent screams of suffering and the whispered hopes of resilience. Through the lens, we confront our shared humanity.’
‘A photograph is a bloody scream trapped on film. It's a battlefield frozen in time, the echo of a life shattered. It's a truth the world tries to ignore, shoved right in their face. We photographers, we hold a mirror up to the madness, hoping it shames them sober.’
Bruce Gilden
‘Photography ain't a stroll in the park; it's a smack in the face, a gut punch that rattles your bones. It's about diving headfirst into the gritty, messy, beautiful chaos of life. Through the lens, I capture the raw, unapologetic truth – the untamed, unfiltered essence of the streets.’
‘Forget fancy! Streets got the real faces. Raw, unfiltered. You gotta get close, flash their damn eyes open. No hiding. That's where the story is. Wrinkles, sweat, maybe a smile – that's life, ain't it? You see it, capture it, shove it in people's faces. Makes them feel something, even if it pisses them off.’
Andreas Gursky
‘Photography transcends the mundane, elevating the ordinary into the extraordinary. It's not merely a snapshot but a reflection of our interconnected world – a symphony of lines, colours, and forms that compose the grandeur of existence. Through meticulous composition, I unveil the sublime essence hidden within the vast expanse of reality.’
‘The photograph is not a captured moment, but a manufactured reality. It isolates details, extruding them into a hyper-focused grid. We confront the world not as experience, but as information. Beauty and alienation become one, a panorama of human excess laid bare.’
Joel Meyerowitz
‘Photography is the art of capturing fleeting moments, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. Through my lens, I unveil the poetry of everyday life, revealing beauty in the mundane. In each frame, time stands still, echoing the whispers of existence, immortalizing the essence of the human experience.’
‘A camera isn't just a tool, it's a license to see. It lets you linger in the everyday symphony of light and colour, catching the secret conversations between shadows and the way a single glance can ignite a scene. It's about capturing the richness of the world, not just the drama, but the quiet beauty humming beneath the surface.’
My original plan was to post a mix of genuine and AI generated quotations and see if readers could tell the difference. Having seen the cliche ridden banalities the AI came up with I shelved that idea. I can’t think of anything I’ve ever heard or read from any of these photographers that sounds remotely like these.
Most of them are overwrought, sounding like the efforts of a low -wattage curator desperately trying to write a caption. They read like an amalgamation of what critics have written (badly) about these photographers, or those puff quotes that authors provide for their friends - extravagant but meaningless. At best, they provide no more than a florid description with a vague connection to a given photographer’s style. What they do not do is communicate anything about the meaning of photography, which was the actual challenge.
Gemini appears to prefer short, staccato sentences (except for Meyerowitz), which is not a problem in itself but when the sentences are all roughly the same length it does begin to sound very unnatural. For Parr, Gemini’s effort is entirely focused on his shots of holiday makers. While these constitute an important part of Parr’s work this is a very limited and limiting perspective. Even while focusing on description rather than meaning Gemini can’t get description right. For both ChatGPT and Gemini the key to Gilden appears to be the use of ‘ain’t’. I could go on analysing these but, honestly, I can’t be bothered. They are so unconvincing it’s not worth the effort.
I did do one more photographer using ChatGPT, since it seems marginally better (less bad) than Gemini. Here it is:
‘Photography is the silent storyteller, weaving narratives from fragments of light and shadow. In the dance of exposure and composition, I uncover the beauty of the overlooked, celebrating the ordinary as extraordinary. Each frame is a whispered ode to the world, inviting viewers to discover its hidden wonders anew.’
Any guesses whose style this might be?
You’re all wrong. It’s me. I’m not convinced ChatGPT has ever come across me and if it has, I’m convinced it’s never sucked up anything I’ve written. I would have been embarrassed to write like this when I was a teenager; now, I’d have to leave the country.
So, I will end with some genuine quotations from the featured photographers to cleanse your palate, as it were, and remind you how real human beings speak and write.
‘There are no themes in my work. It may be difficult for this to be understood outside of Japan—and indeed, often my work is understood as having a theme. Even if I were to construct a theme (and it’s not as if I’ve never done so), I can’t really think about it as I’m working.’ Daido Moriyama1
‘My priority in one sense is to make an entertaining image…but there is also a serious strand running through that work but I don’t try and thrust it down people’s throats. It’s there for people to discover and come across if they want to do so.’ Martin Parr2
‘It’s about the emotional – we’re not just photographers, we gather emotionally. A camera doesn’t mean a toss to me. I just put it in front of me and transfer the image through that piece of glass and that film, but I’m using my emotion more than I’m using that piece of equipment.’ Don McCullin3
‘All of my images are personal. They’re all about me. That’s who I know. And that’s what I’m interested in. I work on intuition and the backgrounds and details are very important to me: it all has to come together. Of course, some pictures are better than others but I’ve always photographed who I am.’ Bruce Gilden4
‘In all my images I try to allow both, the threat and destruction but also the beauty. In this way I may also prevent my images from being understood too quickly. A clearly accusatory image with a political message is not my thing, because the image then loses its appeal. It needs a form, a coding.’ Andreas Gursky5
‘I think that photography is a search for your identity as an artist and as a human being...You make pictures a certain way. If you try to make them to look like other people, you’ll never discover yourself…So my encouragement is for everybody to try to find what is uniquely their way of responding to the world.’ Joel Meyerowitz6
Martin Parr – 'Photography is a Form of Therapy' (Tate Shots)
‘Once photography gets a grip, you're captive’: Don McCullin and Giles Duley in conversation (The Guardian)
Bruce Gilden: True to Himself on the Streets of Tokyo and Osaka | (Magnum Photos)
Andreas Gursky - Interview {Gagosian Quarterly}
Ready for Surprise: Joel Meyerowtiz Interview 2020 (LensCulture)