Between the Photograph and the Frame. The Fate of the Single Image in the Algorithmic Era

The use of deep-learning algorithms in the production of photographs has challenged a key distinction within media images: that between the photograph and the frame. Theory has often emphasized the non-coincidence of these two modes of the photographic, one incomplete and lacking its own visibility, the other autonomous, unique, and finite. But today, the intervention of algorithms at the stage of image capture weakens this distinction. Even the single photographic snapshot becomes a “vertical” concentration of several images, while an apparently fixed photograph can conceal a “horizontal” series of images that also allow the picture to be viewed as a clip. In the face of these “dense” snapshots, which no longer correspond to human perception and imply a very different dialectic between trace and visualization, singular and plural, snapshot and series, does it still make sense to juxtapose the photographic object and the photogrammatic material used within numerous types of imaging? Or should the photographic be redefined as a genetically serial process?