06/19/2026
Is AI killing the art of photography?
Recently I experimented with Firefly, Adobe’s artificial intelligence image creator. I asked it to give me a bagel with lox and cream cheese. Seconds later it presented a classic tabletop food shot, complete with a bokeh background. To create the picture, Firefly doubtless culled through thousands of bagel photographs posted on the Internet by hard-working food bloggers and deli owners. I felt a twinge of guilt about the thievery, but the image served my purpose well enough; that is, it illustrated a breakfast item with 30 grams of protein in keeping with new dietary guidelines.
I asked Firefly one question, and Firefly produced one image. I had an allowance of 1,999 more requests over the next 30 days, all for a mere $9.99. That’s enough images to fill hundreds of books and blogs—for less than $10! I recoiled in horror at the realization: Stock photography is dead. AI is killing photography.
Or is it?
The question is a troubling one for me. I know photography, as an art form, will never die. But how how can I explain this is true?
Recently I came across an unattributed quote on Substack with a resonant truth: “Great art mirrors your soul.”
I’ve experienced that with a photograph. Browsing in a library one day I saw a picture in an arts journal that “mirrored my soul.” I was so moved by it I wrote a fan letter to the photographer, Robert McQuilkin. I gushed on like a schoolgirl about the image being “like poetry.” I cringe when I recall my heartfelt scribblings. Months later, at an arts conference, I was afraid to introduce myself thinking McQuilkin thought my letter was too forward, out of place. As he brushed past me in the dinner line I froze, but a thought instantly flashed through his head “What if that was my wife?” Dinner was over, and the conference nearly over. I timidly approached and introduced myself, expecting a bland rejection. “Oh, you’re Susan!” he said, heartily, eyes wide with surprise. He had suspected the real Susan was a bold conference participant in a babushka, who jumped up out of the audience to answer questions on behalf of the panel of experts. For once I was grateful I am by nature a wallflower. The conversation started between us, and it never stopped. Although we went our separate ways—he to teach a wilderness photography seminar in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, and I to journalism school—daily letters came to my mailbox penned on birchbark and enclosed in carefully folded birchbark envelopes. It was the beginning of our 8-year adventure together. He died, too soon, at the age of 36, while on a photographic assignment. The Daily Herald obituary noted Bob died “camera in hand,” which is surely the way he would have it.
And, yes, I did become his wife.
Here is the picture that so moved me. These many decades later, it is this image I keep closest to me at my desk. It is the first possession be packed up whenever I move, like Leonardo daVinci lugging the Mona Lisa from Italy to France, where it stood in his room until the day he died. The image of the bird in the castle tower still mirrors my soul, and I return to it often for inspiration.
This morning I came across the journal where I first encountered Bob’s photography. Besides a portfolio of pictures, the issue included an essay Bob wrote about what the art of photography meant to him and, more importantly—because he was an enthusiastic life coach—what he felt it should mean to others. Photography, for him, was a way of living, a way of engaging passionately with the world, the way of reaching beyond what we simply see. Here is a brief passage from that essay:
Photography as Art
“A statement on life; that is, to speak of attitudes, feelings, emotions—those are the intangible attributes of a picture. They are the underlinings of photographic artwork. Photo art can be seen then as the antithesis of the snapshot where the primary interest is in the subject—nothing else matters much. In art the subject or internal components are of little concern; their single purpose is to be a vehicle to point to the intent of the work. Every part of a picture says something, not just the main subject.
The intent of the photographer might be anything cognitive or theoretical rather than physical. Mood, texture, peace, love, hate, warmth, contour, tension, anger, morality, psychic, or most anything that is not made of molecules are typical “directions.” Some photographs are produced with universal identity, while others are esoteric and may never be explained. Most will evoke emotion—strong emotion. It does not matter what kind of emotional reaction—just a reaction.
…Refuse to accept your present. Set goals—and when you arrive, build new ones. If you are bound by time, do not shove your schedule, but do not let your time bind your progress [in the art of photography]. In the world of art there is never a ceiling to reach, never a sky to break through—part of its beauty is that its limits are eternal. There are no stages, levels, plateaus, so don’t use these as an excuse.”
Can AI motivate us to live life more fully? Does it go beyond—way, way beyond—simply recording a subject?
Or answer me this: Can AI create an image that “mirrors your soul?”
I think the answer unequivocally, always, and forevermore is . . . “No.”
