One day, all forms of media, including still images, moving images, sound, and even public data such as traffic footage and surveillance camera images from various locations, combined with measurable environmental information, will become digital raw data for AI to manage, interpret, and process. In the near future, when we are able to collect enough data and when AI becomes intelligent enough, it will be capable of producing results that are identical to what a camera would have captured, based solely on the prompts we give. It will also be able to enhance image quality and predict the past or future of the original scene. That output will then become data for the next round of processing, and then the next, until we can no longer trace where the idea of "authenticity" originally began.

The project A PARALLEL HISTORY, A Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Mechanisms of Memory by Simon Brodbeck and Lucie de Barbuat is not just a playful use of AI to mimic legendary photos in photography history. It may actually be predicting exactly what was described in the earlier paragraph. Simon and Lucie use AI’s capabilities to recreate old photographs by feeding it as much related information as possible. According to the project statement, “Each image results from meticulous research into the original techniques, the context of capture, location, and date, aimed at recreating the scene with precision.”

When they worked on this project (2022–2023), it was during the early stages of AI image-generation programs. Around the same time, Boris Eldagsen created THE ELECTRICIAN, part of his series PSEUDOMNESIA (Fake Memory), which sparked global discussions about generative AI in photography. At that time, AI could generate images from simple human-written prompts, but the image quality was still poor and full of flaws. Oddly, these imperfections became a new aesthetic of early AI photography — melting clay-like faces, missing or extra fingers, and surreal distortions that looked like something from a nightmare.

These early flaws were partly due to limited data in training models and incomplete coding, which led to suspicious results. For example, in the AI-generated version of Raising a Flag over the Reichstag by Yevgeny Khaldei, a famous photo of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, it failed to accurately recreate the Soviet flag. This was surprising, considering that such historical information is widely available online, like on Wikipedia. AI shouldn’t make basic mistakes like this. But if it can’t even generate correct fingers, how could we expect it to render the hammer and sickle on a flag?

This project invites a dialogue on Appropriation Art in a new, more complex way. It moves beyond simple imitation, unlike the works of Richard Prince or Sherrie Levine. Instead, it borrows data and memory, similar to how Cindy Sherman performed as B-movie heroines in her photographs. It blends shared memories and human knowledge to create new works that still carry the charm and resistance against the single definition of Modern Art. This process has major implications for photography and its future, with AI becoming both a powerful tool today and a potentially unstoppable force in the years ahead.

About the Artist
Brodbeck & de Barbuat (Simon Brodbeck and Lucie de Barbuat) are a Franco-German artist duo based in Paris. Since 2005, their projects have taken the form of ensembles that question the history of photography and the representation of reality in contemporary images. Inspired by beliefs linked to the mystery of the soul, their work captures Man’s silent melancholy in different ways, highlighting the gap between his existence and the world of dreams.

Fellows of the Villa Medici, French Academy in Rome from 2016 to 2017, they are graduates of the École nationale supérieure de la Photographie in Arles, and the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales in Paris. Winners of the national photographic commission « Image 3.0 » in partnership with the Jeu de Paume and the Cnap national collections in 2021, they were awarded the Prix Jeune création 2013, the HSBC Award for Photography in 2010 and the Nestlé prize at the Festival Images Vevey 2010.

Their work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Fotomuseum in Antwerp, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the Villa Médicis in Rome and the Institut français du Japon, and group exhibitions including the Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, the Arsenale in Venice, the Cairo Biennale, the Saatchi gallery in London, the Museum of Photography in Thessaloniki and the Mucem in Marseille, among others.

https://www.brodbeckdebarbuat.com/