Documentary Work in an Age of Synthetic Images

The argument that synthetic imagery ends documentary photography assumes the medium was ever about the pixels. It was not. It was about presence and accountability.

A generated image has no witness attached to it. A documentary photograph carries a person who can be asked what happened before and after the frame, and who can be held responsible for the answer.

That is the part worth defending: not the craft, not the cameras, but the chain of custody between an event and the person who chose to point a lens at it.