Photography is... Surreal: (Re)interpreting reality in photography

Foam joins forces with digital culture platform The Hmm for a series of online talks. In Photography is..., we investigate how internet culture permeates and alters different layers of photography—extending the photographic field exponentially. How does our relationship with the photographic image shift and change to the internet's cultural and technological developments? In our image-saturated world, where real images can win an AI image award and fake images are believed to be true, how is the photographic medium surpassing our sense of reality? And how is the medium going beyond its own 'reality', its traditional, two-dimensional forms? The final event of the series explores the variety of photographic expressions that emerge from the internet, embracing the changing medium in all its weirdness and surreality. Traditionally, the photographic medium has held a certain claim on the truth. From its invention, a photo was seen as the ultimate document of reality, even though early on manipulation and framing were part of the medium. Fueled by digital technologies, the possibilities to edit, alter and construct images grew exponentially and embedded itself within internet cultures. Manipulating, appropriating, and even generating visual material is very much part of the language of the internet, diverging more and more from any original meaning or reality. What is the impact of such imagery, that is increasingly harder to connect to something that exists in the world? Speakers include: Sarah Amrani, Jason Koebler, Silvia Dal Dosso, Francesco Luzzana (kamo) and Linda Dounia Rebeiz.