Soft Photography is a research project conducted by the Master Photography at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne with the support of the HES-SO. It aims to shed light on the role of human emotions in the creation and reception of images produced using generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) or computer-generated imagery (CGI).
Carried out from September 2024 to Spring 2026, this research focuses an unthought-of aspect of generative AI and CGI: the significance of human emotions, both in the creation of these tools (database annotation, software programming, cultural bias) and in the perception of the produced images (empathy, visual culture, subconsciousness) or their uses (capitalism of emotion, soft power, self-representation, political propaganda). The discussion and research surrounding the exponential development of AI technologies in visual culture often overlook this emotional component, even though it is structurally linked to these technologies, as they necessarily involve human apprehension. Unlike automated images, which frequently have an operational function and are only ‘seen’ by machines, images generated by AI and CGI are essentially created for humans, whether for social networks, advertising, industry, politics, or the artistic field. Soft Photography aims to examine the role and function of emotions by analyzing these new photographic tools and looking at specific occurrences, such as memories reconstructed in CGI or AI. Far from strictly formal experimentation, these practices demonstrate the complex entanglement between emotion, subjectivity, technical processes, and vulnerability. The project, therefore, aims to map, analyze, and experiment with the place of emotions within these new practices.
CONTEXT
Many recent projects address emotions in the context of automated technologies analyzing and controlling human emotions through machines (artificial intelligence, computer vision, robotics, personal assistants). Soft Photography is a response to this approach and focuses on the processes of activation of human emotions by artificial photographic images (generative AI and CGI).
As a counterpoint, Soft Photography follows on from the cybernetics of the 1960s, which aimed to use machines to provoke emotions and develop new artistic forms. The emergence of computer art is a prolific environment in which there is already a tension between the generative dimension of art and aesthetic theories that incorporate a perceptual and participatory dimension in a context of viewer emancipation.
Today, we are witnessing the emergence of artistic approaches that add complexity to the relationship between humanity and its tools. Beyond the simplistic dichotomy between being and machine, many artists propose profound hybridizations of their relationship. This link between technology and empathy encompasses the whole of human experience: trauma, vulnerability, passions and instincts.
Ethically questionable practices are emerging with AI-generated images of historical events and news provoking outrage in the world of photojournalism, reviving an old debate about the objectivity of images. Beyond press images, AI-generated images are being deployed in all areas of application: political propaganda, editorial and advertising images, scientific illustrations.
With the advent of new technologies, many artists are now experimenting with ways of activating or negotiating new emotional and sensitive imaginaries using generative technologies. Soft Photography draws on these significant developments and critically analyzes these new practices.