My Creative Process with AI in Contemporary Photography
Where It Started
Looking back, the start of my creative process with AI came from a limitation I felt within photography.
During my time at the Fotoacademie, I focused on portraiture. That went well — I was even nominated for the Rabobank Portrait Prize — but at the same time I felt something was missing. I wanted to intervene more in the image and push it further than what I could achieve by photographing someone as they are.
Altering faces or identities didn’t feel right within traditional portrait photography. That tension pushed me towards staging. In my second year, I started working in a studio with models, styling and props, building images instead of capturing them.
Around that same time, AI started to come up more and more. What I was constructing in a physical space could possibly be generated digitally. I therefore started experimenting with different kinds of AI software, finding that what I sometimes missed in photography, could be reached with AI. It helps me add the many layers and angles that can be found in my work.
Besides being intrigued, it raised a very essential question: if AI could generate such realistic images, what actually defines being an artist?
AI as Part of the Process
For me, AI is part of my process and not the starting point or maker of an image. Everything I create builds on work I was already making before AI became involved. Each of my images begins with something real. I work with a model and build the image through styling and make-up. That base matters. From there, the process shifts into something more open, where I start working with AI. I generate material, sit with it, adjust it, and often discard most of it again. It takes time. One image can take up to one and a half months.
Control and Letting Go
Working with AI means giving up a certain level of control. You can start with a clear idea and still end up somewhere completely different. Sometimes the results don’t fit my work at all, but they still show something useful. An angle I wouldn’t have thought of myself.
I take those, sometimes unexpected, suggestions and bring it back into my own visual language. That movement between what I make and what the tool produces is where the work develops. Because of that, it becomes more important to be clear about your position as a maker. If I don’t have a clear vision about the image I’m trying to make, the process quickly turns into noise. That is what I mean by using AI as a tool; it can assist, but in order to get what you want, you’ll need an artistic vision.
Authorship and Selection
AI can generate endlessly, but that doesn’t make the process easier. What matters is what you choose to keep and what you leave behind. I see everything that comes out of AI as something to respond to, not something to accept. That's where the creative eye comes into play.
That also means letting go of images that might work visually, but don’t belong to what I’m trying to make. With every decision I make I keep in mind what signature and style I want to establish in my work.
Perception as a Constant
Everything I do is connected to perception. The idea that what we see is never fixed, but always shaped by who is looking. That interest was already there before I started working with AI, and it keeps returning in my work. AI as a tool helps me investigate this interest further; it allows me to move beyond what I can do with a camera alone and brings me to images I wouldn’t have reached otherwise.
So working with AI offers opportunities, but also challenges. While speeding things up in a certain way, it forces me to slow down and look more critically at the same time. Even with a clear vision, you’re not guaranteed that you’ll end up with what was in your head. It develops over time, through going back and forth, adjusting and sometimes starting again. Moments like that are why “trust the process” exists. Owning this process is where the artistic value lies
