Carlos Rosique | Alicante (EFE).- Getting citizens to distinguish between real images and those created by artificial intelligence is one of the great challenges of photojournalism, as explained by Cristina de Middel, director of the Magnum Agency, founded 75 years ago by Robert Capa as a cooperative of photojournalists.
Cristina de Middel, from Alicante, who is the second woman to direct the Magnum Agency, indicated in an interview with Efe that one solution could be to create a seal or a name that distinguishes real images “because people are not educated to differentiate what is which is reality and fiction in one photo”.
Trump fakes
He coincidentally makes these statements while the image created by AI appears in the background in which former US President Donald Trump is seen detained on a New York street and which has shaken the media this week.
De Middel, who has presented the ‘Close Enough’ exhibition in Alicante this week -the first of the three of the Magnum Agency in the Valencian Community-, highlights that right now there is a visual fiction that is “extremely realistic”.
For this reason, he affirms that Magnum is immersed in a working group to teach how to distinguish which resources are made by photojournalists and which are generated by Artificial Intelligence.
However, the photojournalist (Alicante, 1975), who has been in office for almost nine months, has highlighted that this is just one of the many challenges for the Magnum Agency to present in New York, London and Paris, “ continue to function as a business within the mismatches of the press and photography in recent years”.
“Magnum continues to have to be viable as a company because we are neither a museum nor an institution, but rather an agency that has to be profitable,” highlights De Middel, who stresses that they want to “continue to be relevant” within this tidal wave of changes in languages and infrastructures, but also in the style of photography.
Evolution without denying the past
He defends that in recent years there has been “an evolution” of photography, since the image “is much more questioned” and entails “much more dialogue”, since society has changed its understanding of the image and the use that is made of it. about her.
The first Spanish person to preside over the Magnum Agency, who has turned 75 under his mandate, stresses that photography, which before “was like a house and only had a room and a living room, now also has a west wing, a second floor, a hill… the house has gotten bigger”.
He maintains that there is a “questioning” of classic documentary film, which, however, was what led the Magnum Agency to become known worldwide: “It is normal that -current photographs- are not well framed, because the photographer has to show that in this In the world there are no certainties and there are risks”.
Therefore, it stands out that the image of half a century ago sought to document a time with much more certainty, but that “now, if you study, you will not securely get a job, nor will you be in it all your life”, so the The reporter has, through the framing, the possibility of showing that such certainties no longer exist and that “many more risks” do exist.
More questions than certainties
Asked if the Magnum Agency now renounces that more classic style, she affirms that it does not and that it is the fact of “how photography is used to document a society in which there are many more questions than certainties” that has led to “expanding ” -not to deny- in order to portray the new generations.
However, he highlights that this path, that of the evolution of the institution, has been taken hand in hand: “The very fact that I am part of the agency already shows an evolution in how photography is used to document a society in in which there are many more questions than certainties”.
“For me, on an individual level, Magnum has evolved almost as I have evolved and now we work very well together precisely because we are on the same wavelength, but that does not mean that there is a denial of the above, there is simply an extension ”, admits De Middel.
The relationship with the photographed
The 2017 National Photography Award winner also points out that “there is no conflict” and that the new members have not arrived “to throw anyone out”, but now “more things are accepted, because indeed there are more things, and also because photography or the power relations between the photographer and the photographed are questioned much more”.
These power relations are due to the fact that the photographer somehow, he says, has “the responsibility of taking charge of how the other person wants to be represented and that, which can be understood as a limitation, basically what he does is open more doors to tell stories from another point of view and with more depth”. EFE