Masterclass Lecture
Masterclass Lecture
Images and Ideas: An Introduction
Susan Sontag famously wrote some fifty years ago that “a photograph is not only an image, an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.” That now seems nostalgic. In the last 35 years the photograph became highly malleable, a digital image that is made up of a mosaic of pixels that are easy to modify with software. The image became less of a “trace” and more of a collage. The recent emergence of AI-generated photorealistic imagery means that the photograph can now be simulated without even the use of a camera. How do we use this new media environment in creative and credible ways? Can AI-generated imagery help to explore that which may be beyond the reach of photography, such as dreams and nightmares, traumas, ancient histories, and the future? Is it still possible to have a “shared reality” given the fracturing of the media environment? Where do we go from here?
Fred Ritchin has spent the past half-century working as a writer, editor, educator, curator, and software developer. He is the dean emeritus of the School at the International Center of Photography; was professor of Photography & Imaging at New York University where he co-founded the Photography and Human Rights program in collaboration with Susan Meiselas and the Magnum Foundation; was picture editor of The New York Times Magazine and executive editor of Camera Arts magazine; and has written four books on the future of imaging, including most recently The Synthetic Eye: Photography Transformed in the Age of AI (Thames & Hudson, 2025) and Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen, which was recently re-printed by Aperture.
He also curated the first mid-life retrospective of the work of Sebastião Salgado at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; conceived and edited the first non-linear online documentary, “Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Peace,” with photographer Gilles Peress (nominated by the New York Times for the Pulitzer Prize in public service), and curated the first exhibition of contemporary Latin American photography in the United States, as well as exhibitions at the United Nations. He also created the first multimedia version of the New York Times newspaper, and conceived of the Four Corners Project, an available open-source software to increase the credibility of the photograph.
Ritchin has taught and lectured worldwide, including in Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, England, France, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, Uruguay, and the United States. He also writes a column on Substack, “Notes of a MetaPhotographer.” Ritchin lives in New York and Paris.
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