Artist Refuses Photography Prize After Winning Contest With AI-Generated Image

When Boris Eldagsen won the World Photography Organization’s Sony World Photography Awards, he did the unexpected: forfeit the prestigious prize. The piece, titled The Electrician, portrays two women, one crouching behind the other. Another hand appears in the foreground.

The photographer said that while he was initially “happy” that his submission made the cut, he felt that images created with artificial intelligence—which Christian Vinces, one of his community members, coined as “promptography”—should not compete with actual photographs.

Eldagsen’s winning picture was created as part of a series dubbed Pseudomnesia, in which the photographer repeatedly submitted prompts to an AI language generator. He then edited the image using inpainting, outpainting, and prompt whispering techniques.

“Just as photography replaced painting in the reproduction of reality, AI will replace photography. Don’t be afraid of the future. It will just be more obvious that our mind always created the world that makes it suffer,” the lensman wrote in the description for The Electrician.

However, it seems Eldagsen may have changed his mind in the time between submitting the picture and being awarded the prize, recently explaining in a statement that the world of photography requires an “open discussion” on what constitutes the craft.

“We, the photo world, need an open discussion. A discussion about what we want to consider photography and what not. Is the umbrella of photography large enough to invite AI images to enter—or would this be a mistake?” he mused.

Instead of accepting the prize money, the shutterbug requested the jury donate the award to a photography festival in Odesa, Ukraine. Understandably, it doesn’t seem the World Photography Organization isn’t too welcoming of the public snub.

In a statement, the group said that it has suspended its activities with Eldagsen and removed him from the competition, concluding that it no longer felt it was able to engage in a “meaningful and constructive dialogue” with the photographer.

Learn more about Eldagsen’s work at his website, Facebook page, Instagram page, and YouTube channel. 

[via ARTnews and PetaPixel, images courtesy of Boris Eldagsen]