Steffen Siegel (D–Essen):
What if speculation about photography’s future has always shaped the medium’s presence? In his opening address, Steffen Siegel frames photography as a history of past futures, shaped by expectations, hopes, and projections – from early daguerreotype announcements to the launch of the iPhone. Speculation, he suggests, is a forward-looking practice with a double edge: it can generate insight, yet also distort perception.
So understanding photography’s future requires a deep grasp of its ruptures, reconfigurations, and shifting material and epistemic conditions, rather than a simple linear narrative. What happens if the real question may not be whether speculation can mislead, but how engaging with its risks might reveal unexpected ways of understanding the medium?
Monica Bravo (USA–Princeton):
What if the future of photography is no longer just about two-dimensional images, but about space? In her lecture, Monica C. Bravo explores how tools like Apple’s Vision Pro and Spatial Photos on iPhones push photography toward »spatial computing«, blending 3D capture with augmented reality. While spatial photography has a long history, today it challenges photography’s traditional attachment to flat screens, promising new forms of tactility while often amplifying the gap between presence and absence.
Follow this session to see how spatial photography intersects with debates on vision, embodiment, and image surfaces, from critiques of realism to postcolonial challenges to »depth« as a knowledge regime. Is spatial photography still finding its artistic and experiential grammar, while reminding us that, despite new dimensions, it remains photography at its core?
Chair: Jakob Schnetz, Folkwang University of the Arts & KWI – Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities
Bernd Behr (GB–London):
What if photography’s future lies in the autonomous car? In his lecture, Bernd Behr explores how self-driving systems turn seeing into a media apparatus, where perception, visibility, and misperception collide. From Niépce’s asphalt to today’s vehicle-mounted cameras, he explains how the shift from motor to camera fundamentally changes the way we understand the city.
Follow Bernd’s session to discover how Daimler’s Cityscapes dataset exposes the hidden work behind »ground truth« – from human labeling to the choices that shape machine vision. What happens when humanities-style close reading meets autonomous perception, and what does it reveal about photography, seeing, and urban life in the age of AI?
Chair: Jakob Schnetz, Folkwang University of the Arts & KWI – Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities
Helen Westgeest (NL–Leiden):
What if the future of photography lies not just in capturing the past, but in shaping the way we see the world? In her lecture, Helen Westgeest explores a »photographic way of life«, where perception is increasingly mediated through screens and cameras rather than direct observation. Drawing on Claire Bishop’s concept of »disordered attention«, she considers whether smartphone distraction can also be a relational form of seeing. She then investigates the »mediating body« where eyes and mind archive, interpret, and manipulate images, raising questions about memory, perception, and potential privacy risks in future technologies.
Follow the session to explore how Helen Westgeest situates photography in the evolution of vision, comparing human and animal eyes, and asks whether future images must even remain visual. Is photography still what we think in a world full of sensors and screens?
Chair: Vera Knippschild, Folkwang University of the Arts
Paul Frosh (ISR–Jerusalem):
What if photography’s future means that core photographic practices will persist despite generative AI? In his lecture, Paul Frosh outlines three overlapping strands: first, corporeal photography, where gestures, routines, and embodied interaction shape social and political rituals; second, platform photography, where drones, satellites, and stationary systems extend vision beyond the human body for science, surveillance, and activism; and third, generative, body-detached image production, where AI translates photographic knowledge into prompts, producing photorealistic images that imitate rather than replace photography grounded in physical presence.
Follow the discussion to explore questions of labor, value, and authorship, as well as the ethics and politics of proximity, control, and surveillance. What does photography become when bodies, machines, and algorithms intersect and how will these interactions shape the future of seeing?
Chair: Vera Knippschild, Folkwang University of the Arts
André Gunthert (F–Paris):
What if the future of photography means that photography itself shapes AI more than vice versa? In his lecture, André Gunthert explains how AI works by statistically remixing photographic, cinematic, and video images, imposing photorealism as a norm – even though it is only one style among many. Comparing today’s debates to past concerns over digital retouching, he notes that skepticism now lingers, partly because AI often produces images with deliberate intent to deceive.
Follow the discussion to explore why the traditional »true vs. false« framework is too narrow, and why fiction must return as a key category, using realistic means without being judged as fraud. How can we cultivate the image literacy needed to navigate trust, fiction, and manipulation in a world of AI-generated visuals?
Chair: Mona Leinung, Folkwang University of the Arts
Terrence Phearse (USA–New York):
Mise en sein: Photography in the Age of The Happy Slave
The speaker did not consent to the publication of the talk, for reasons we understand and deeply respect.
Daniel Rubinstein (GB–London):
What if the future of photography means to anchor experience in the world? In his lecture, Daniel Rubinstein unfolds how photography has historically been grounded in real events. Even manipulated or ideologically shaped photographs operated within a space where truth could still matter. In contrast to this AI-generated images are not just faster cameras, but generated appearances without exposure, risk, or event. From psychoanalytic and political perspectives, Rubinstein explores how AI images disrupt symbolic processing, temporal integration, and relational witnessing, potentially flattening cultural and cognitive experience.
Follow the discussion to consider how the loss of world-reference in images affects judgment, freedom, and social institutions. Can photography endure as a practice of witnessing in an era of images without events?
Chair: Francisco Vogel, Folkwang University of the Arts
Cringuta Irina Pelea (ROM–Bukarest):
Virtual Human Photography in Japan: When the Photographed Subject Never Existed
The speaker did not consent to the publication of the talk, for reasons we understand and deeply respect.
Therese Schuleit (D–Mülheim):
What if the future of photography is about technical inscription to create responsibility, intervention, and credibility in a world of generative images? In her lecture, Therese Schuleit positions photocopy as a precursor to generative systems, highlighting the distinction between “image taking” (capturing the world) and “image writing” (bureaucratic, technical inscription). Photocopy, she shows, has historically been tied to verification, control, and accountability, and its material and procedural logic prefigures many challenges of contemporary AI-generated imagery.
Follow the discussion to see how copying practices shaped notions of authenticity, proof, and manipulation in past and presence. What can such a history of photocopy consequently teach us about authorship, trust, and intervention in AI future?
Chair: Dr. Anja Schürmann, KWI – Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities
Jens Schröter (D–Bonn):
What if the future of photography is about measuring and reconstructing the unseen? Jens Schröter explores speculative but historically grounded futures of photography through two cutting-edge laboratory technologies: Ghost Imaging, which forms images via correlated or entangled light fields without direct contact with the object, and Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) Imaging, which reconstructs hidden scenes from scattered light. Both approaches, he argues, remain photographic because they rely on indexical traces of electromagnetic radiation, even when the final images are computationally rendered.
Follow the discussion to see how these techniques expand what can be visible, raise military and surveillance questions, and challenge how we understand reference, trust, and authorship. What responsibilities and interventions are demanded, when photography can see around corners?
Chair: Franziska Barth, Ruhr University Bochum & KWI – Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities
Michelle Henning (GB–Liverpool):
What if the core of photography’s future is about sensing, worlding, and shaping relationships? Michelle Henning examines how computational photography and generative AI transform everyday photography: Large tech companies don’t just offer technical items such as smartphones and digital cameras. They produce theories of photography, framing what counts as realism, authenticity, and social value. Michelle points out how the reinvention of the darkroom in photographic art opens up a contrarian philosophical model of what photography can be and mean.
Follow the discussion to explore how photography can become a relational practice to connect humans, nonhuman entities. How can photography remain a space for mindful engagement, encounter, and critical reflection in an era of invisible pipelines and algorithmic shaping?
Chair: Franziska Barth, Ruhr University Bochum & KWI – Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities
Markus Rautzenberg (D–Essen):
What if photography’s future is not defined by what it is,but by how it operates? In his conclusion, Markus Rautzenberg reframes photography as a shifting field of »modal configurations« – a set of changing, rule-based practices that gain and lose relevance over time – rather than a stable medium grounded in technique, materiality, or indexicality. The lectures of the 3rd Essen Symposium for Photography reveal a medium shaped by friction,overlap, and transformation.
Follow this talk to understand how photographic knowledgeemerges not from images alone, but from shared social expectations and uses. When and under what conditions do images count as credible, meaningful, or true? And does this mean that photography may be less in crisis than our waysof understanding it?
Organizing committee:
On behalf of the Essen Center for Photography, the 3rd Essen Symposium for Photography organizers are
Franziska Barth (Ruhr University Bochum, KWI – Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities),
Vera Knippschild (Folkwang University of the Arts),
Mona Leinung (Folkwang University of the Arts),
Markus Rautzenberg (Folkwang University of the Arts),
Anja Schürmann (KWI – Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities),
Steffen Siegel (Folkwang University of the Arts),
Jakob Schnetz (Folkwang University of the Arts, KWI – Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities),
Francisco Vogel (Folkwang University of the Arts).