Roope Rainisto: Redefining Reality with AI in Post-Photography

It’s hard to think of another movement that feels so aligned with the contemporary moment as post-photography. The ease with which it plays with reality, its embrace of digital technology, its reframing of the image from a method of documentation to one of communication and expression, all feel entirely in sync with an era defined by post-truth, technological anxiety and the endless scroll. The advent of digital cameras and social platforms has transformed visual consumption, leading to what Joan Fontcuberta describes as the "Iconosphere"—a domain where images are manipulated, curated, and interacted with in complex new ways. In this new landscape, Rainisto has emerged as a defining artist, constructing alternate realities with his innovative use of generative AI, exploring the unsettling tension between the real and unreal.

Rainisto’s work is a distillation of multi-decade practice taking in design, photography, and screenwriting. This layered understanding enables him to fluently employ deeply ingrained cultural signifiers, re-framing the mundane and altering perspective, building on the post-photographic idea of a fluid reality and rejecting the notion that traditional photography is about capturing objective reality at all. “In my mind photography has always been about the real and the unreal. Photos are not real. They're 2D pieces of paper. We have this cultural acceptance, shared norms to consider them real.”

Rainisto recognised early on that AI’s strength as a post-photographic tool lies in its fallibility, eschewing perfect outputs in favour of images that underscored the use of AI in the process. Speaking with the Provenance podcast in August 2023 about the origins of his “Life In West America” collection, Rainisto reflected, ‘when I started I was trying to make things as realistic as they can be… but when I was doing that, those photos left me a bit cold… They looked real, but felt fake. I was more interested in the ones with the AI artefacts, that had the new type of visual language… the most interesting results are when I enhance the AI-ness’ 

It's interesting to consider how AI itself fits into the notion of a post-photographic practice; although born in isolation, each has found a very natural pairing in the other. As outlined by Joan Fontcuberta’s manifesto-decalogue for post-photography, the post-photographic practice concerns itself less with prescribed notions of creation and authorship, focusing instead on the networked state of contemporary digital culture and the proliferation and sharing of images. Artists become editors, adapting and sampling existing works from the Iconosphere, reframing them to fit the desired context. While these ideas were formed prior to the current digital art renaissance, growth of AI and LLMs, they clearly address the contemporary use of AI in art, pre-empting debates around the role of the artist, authorship and use of work in training data. With this ability to delve into the Iconosphere, adapt and repurpose visual imagery, move between the real and the unreal, and refocus the role of the artist, AI has become the ideal post-photographic tool, as capable of capturing the splintered perspective of the modern moment in all its uncertainty and ambiguity as the lens has been in capturing the singular perspective of the decisive one.

The familiarity Rainisto has with both AI and traditional photographic methods allows him to play with the inherent tension between the two, utilising AI technology not simply as a tool but as an integral part of the creative expression, blurring the true and the false, and using the space between to explore and examine deeply ingrained cultural norms and concepts. Past projects like "Reworld" and "Life In West America" delve into societal structures and identity, passing idealised, often aspirational tropes through the AI-gaze. The resulting juxtaposition highlights the absurdity, shifting certainties and unease at the centre of modern life, calling into question not simply the veracity of what we are viewing in the work, but the world around us. The work exemplifies the narrative rather than representational approach post-photography takes, playing with both time and perspective. This is true literally and figuratively, with each piece resulting from the myriad of images within data sets, un-anchoring the output from time and imbuing it with multiple truths and viewpoints.

Rainisto’s latest major collection “Vacation” is both a confluence and an advancement of his previous work. The series plays with notions of escapism and holiday, examining society’s obsession with the new, the search for meaning, and the inherent human desire for change. Thematically drawing on aspects of day-to-day Americana that have become deeply held motifs for aspirational living, cars, pools, beaches, and excessive consumption are all depicted in vivid technicolour. The images carry a soft focus, nostalgic quality, tapping into a subconscious romanticised notion of reality, that is interrogated and reframed through the instability of contemporary AI. By highlighting the personal, the mundane, the ephemera of imagined lives and places, Rainisto draws on already established notions within the post-photographic cannon that put forward the idea of the image as an infinitely self-expressive and autobiographical tool, unencumbered by traditional photographic notions of ‘the decisive moment’. Like “Reworld” and “Life In West America”, “Vacation” reflects the new visual language that has developed alongside the rise in social media platforms and the ubiquity of the digital camera, where new realities are crafted, and identities formed through a constant flow of image manipulation, curation, and re-contextualisation. 

As technologies continue to develop, and our individual perceptions of the world continue to fragment and destabilise, post-photography will become an increasingly vital tool for us to navigate and find understanding in this altered landscape. Its central themes could not be more relevant to today, with its thoughts on digital distribution and the value proposition of shared images feeling shockingly predictive of the way web3 ascribes cultural value, while the transformation of the image into a means of expression, identity and communication speaks both to the rise of social platforms and PFPs. Rainisto stands at the forefront of a core group of artists breaking new ground, working with cutting edge AI and blockchain technologies, and through post-photography, exploring the very essence of what it is to be human in a new digital age. 

Written by @abrokenaesthetic

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