The fate of the ‘magical substitute’: personal photography, memory and AI

How is AI impacting the inextricable link between photography and memory? With a focus on personal photography, this article approaches this question through a series of encounters focused on a reconsideration of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the photograph as a ‘magical substitute’ — compensating for the passage of time and the limitation of memory. Revisiting Bourdieu’s seminal 1960s study of popular photography in France and contrasting it with a recent study of camera-phone practices in Australia, it considers the ruptures wrought by the networked image, machine vision and generative imagery. Finally, it considers how contemporary artists are working with generative imagery and personal photography to privilege collaborative and imaginative dialogues, simultaneously raising important questions about what is at stake in this latest commodification of visual memory.