Arbiter Elegantiae of Photography

Most social media platforms have farmed out the job of Arbiter Elegantiae to algorithms, and I wonder whether or not AI will soon be the judge of merit, elegance, and taste for the photography that we experience on the internet.

In the past, gallery owners, photo editors for magazines and newspapers, museum curators, and others have all functioned in the roll of an arbiter elegantiae, and then gasp! the public. While you or I may not have always agreed with their selections, at least they were humans selecting them. But to some extent, they curated what photos we saw. Often the curation resulted in photos with merit that were interesting to see.

Back in the early days of the internet and social media, one of the promises was that we’d be freed from stuffy curators. The promise was that we’d be able to see and follow the work of people we enjoyed, but soon the owners of social media, where the internet traffic moved to, started to show the work of people who we didn’t follow, and the social media was TikTok-ified in that the recommendations were given priority. Recently, and I’m paraphrasing, the head of Instagram when writing about Threads wrote that follower count no longer matters, you’re going to be shown what the algorithm wants you to see and your followers won’t likely see your work.

It’s near the end of self-curation, and now that algorithms function in the capacity of Arbiter Elegantiae, it shows you photos that keep you engaged and scrolling past ad after ad on the platform you’re on. I’ve noticed a trends in my feeds. I’m often fed super normal images that invoke a peak shift effect (I’m teaching a photo workshop next year about this and other visual stimuli). These are often the most popular of photos. I’ll often have a visceral negative reaction to some of these supernormal photos, but other people are driven by a positive reaction to them. It all depends on how your brain is wired.

Opposite of the the super normal stimuli is the mundane, and I’ve seen more mundane photos in my feeds as I’ve reacted against the popular peak shifted photos. As much as I enjoy it as a reaction against the supernormal photos, I want the sweet spot between — the spot that I hope most my images fall (See: 24mm is the best landscape focal length).

Over time, these algorithms learn from your data and work to feed you more of the same. I worry that AI is going to be the algorithms on steroids. It’ll better identify exactly what you like and feed it to you. Maybe if you ask for something different, it’ll feed you that. Soon, the sharing platforms and search will be controlled by AI (hopefully controlled by humans), and those AIs will be tuned to keep you on the platform with addictive results regardless of what you ask for.

My hope for photography and for you as someone who practices photography is that it doesn’t influence what you like to shoot. To that end, I’ve been thinking about two things:

1. What is a good style for those interested in developing their own photography. To that end, I’m incorporating this into my photo workshop presentations.

2. The “value” of your photography. To that end, I’m encouraging you to photograph in your style.

For style, I’m not a deep philosopher. I feel like it is simple. Your style should be:

1. One that has you photographing the subjects you like to photograph in the way you like to photograph those subjects.

2. One that satisfies your photographic expressive vision.

3. One that evokes from within you an emotional response.

4. One that is not static but changes as you change and responds to how you feel and one that grows with you.

5. One that develops naturally as you focus on creating photos that are based upon, and expansions of, ideas explored in previous favorite photos that you took.

For value, I hesitate to apply the language of capitalism (value, worth, wealth, sales) to personal photography, but sidestepping the terminology I think there’s a way to decide what is good and what isn’t.

The value of photography that gets talked about centers upon the value of the work that is produced. We judge that value of the works at every level from museums, to juried art fairs, to how much they sell for. The work is what history comments on as well.

We often neglect talking about the value of being creative. The people producing photos, even those photos that might be considered "bad photography," are using their imagination to create something, and there’s intrinsic goodness in the action of photographic creation.

Personally, I find more value or more good for myself in making the photo than the artistic value of what I produce. For me, the value of the work itself is always secondary to the act of imagining and creating the photo.

the man pulling radishes
pointed the way
with a radish.

— Issa

As the world becomes supercharged via AI and our online communities change due to AIs showing you supernormal stimuli designed to keep you scrolling, please take time to focus on the favorite photos that you’ve taken. Get outside and make more photos in that style. Mess around with those ideas and explore the world with that in mind, and use whatever makes you happy in your work to develop your style.

Ultimately with where I see photography going, the value and the good is centered upon human imaginative creation. Center yourself there and you’ll find all the riches in the world.

Until next time

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter. My 2025 Photography Workshops are open for registration. Some are sold out already, but most have open spaces. I’m always surprised by what fills first every year. This year, it was Gales of November, which I would have never guessed. The night sky classes still have a lot of openings. Cook County, Minnesota is where I run those workshops, and the skies in Cook County are among the darkest in the world.

I’ll see you again in two weeks.