Snježana Šimić

The recent rise in AI’s creative capabilities presents us with a challenging question: Are contemporary machines genuinely creative? Can we consider their creations to be works of art? And, ultimately, how can something as automatic as a computer possibly be creative? While it is undeniable that today’s new technologies have made the issue of techno-automatic art and creation both more complex and more prominent, I contend, however, that the relationship between creativity and automatism (or automation) is not new. My hypothesis is that, first, the invention of photography already raised these questions, and second, that there is a link between automatism and creativity, such that even our own creativity may partially rely on certain automatic processes. Consequently, the aim of this paper is not to provide definitive answers to the above questions but rather to reflect on the relationship between creativity and automatism through the lens of photography.

This article explores the hypothesis that artificial life of machines is the source of their aesthetic and creative value, with a particular focus on photography. The first part is devoted to a broader philosophical analysis of how artificial life can be defined. It begins with a Simondonian relativisation of the opposition between the natural and the artificial, proposing that open machines should be understood less as artificial constructs and more as organised beings integrated into the natural world. This concept of contingent becoming, traditionally associated primarily with the material aspects of machines, is expanded in contemporary theory to include their formal aspects, thereby encompassing the contingent nature of machines on all levels. The second part of the article examines the aesthetico-photographic articulation of these ideas, both theoretically and practically, through analyses of selected photographic works. It is shown here how the contingent aspects of photography as a machine ensure its aesthetic character — not in spite of its technological, nonhuman dimension of automation, but precisely because of it. This confirms the initial hypothesis that the life of automation, paralleling the automation of life, gives rise to its creative potential.

I reconsider key arguments in and about Camera Lucida in order to clarify their philosophical origins. Focusing on three interrelated issues, I aim both to do justice to Barthes’s book and to enable a more nuanced critique of his work. First, I revisit his understanding of the problem of the referent, or of the real in the image, an issue still subject to divergent interpretations but crucial for understanding his methodological choices. Second, I argue that Camera Lucida is even more phenomenological than Barthes acknowledged, shaped not only by Sartre but also, implicitly, by Heidegger, whose influence is absent from both the text and its theoretical reception. Third, I address the problem of semiology and semiotics. Against the view that Camera Lucida marks a rupture between Barthes the semiologist and Barthes the phenomenologist, I propose that there is, in fact, a continuity of thought on photography despite its shift in method. This involves comparing Camera Lucida with index theories of photography and engaging controversies related to C. S. Peirce. Ultimately, I suggest that photography led Barthes to the limits of both semiotics and phenomenology, limits that opened the possibility of a new notion of art.

Compte-rendu du numéro Photographie et politique, sous la direction de Christophe David et Joan Grandjean, Tumultes, n° 60-61, Éditions Kimé, oct. 2023, 408 pages. Le titre en dit tout : il ne s'agit pas simplement d'un volume consacré à la photographie, mais de cette intrication spécifique entre le photographique et le politique, ou encore, de ce que la photographie peut faire à la politique et vice-versa. D'une certaine façon, tous les textes de ce numéro posent la même question : la photographie peut-elle être politique et comment ? Ou, pour reformuler cette citation (en réalité une question rhétorique) de D. Levi Strauss : comment l'image en tant qu'apparition pourrait-elle détourner son inclination inhérente à l'illusion vers un engagement politique ?