Louis
Frehring

Borrowed—or rather diverted—from the title of Fred Ritchin’s book, After After Photography is a research project born out of a sense that a shift is taking place. For several years, I have felt that we are moving towards a visual regime in which photography, long regarded as a privileged witness to reality, is gradually being dissolved into a new category of images: photographic in appearance, yet produced entirely by algorithms. With the widespread adoption of AI image-generation tools, it has become not only easier to produce an image than to photograph one, but also increasingly difficult to determine its origin and understand its status, semiotically, as its mode of signification is being redefined, and ontologically, as photography gradually loses what once made it distinct: its material connection to reality.

Although photography was my entry point into the art world, I stopped practising it during my studies. Not out of disinterest, but out of saturation: first, a quantitative saturation caused by the continuous flow of images; then an aesthetic one, as images increasingly seemed standardised, smoothed over by the gradual disappearance of intention. Yet this overdose of images never diminished my interest in photography as an object; if anything, it intensified it. I believe the time has now come for me to become a photographer again, or perhaps even a post-photographer.

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Histoires et mythologieses de l’informatique (Histories and mythologies of computing) is a series of three works: Unlimited, Cloud Computing and Constant Renewal, created in 2023 during a residency at the contemporary art centre 40mcube.

The project examines the symbolic and subjective dimensions of computing through the myths, beliefs and representations that have accompanied its development and still shape our relationship to digital technologies. Far from being a neutral or purely rational tool, computing is bound up with powerful imaginaries, worldviews and promises of progress that deserve to be questioned.

Each work brings one of these myths into view, making perceptible the hidden structures and implicit narratives that shape our tools, habits and perceptions. By revealing the dogmatic side of technology, this project invites a critical yet sensitive reading of the technologies that organise contemporary life.

Virtualised Works is a collection of my work specifically conceived for digital spaces. Designed to be experienced through devices such as computers and smartphones, as well as through browsers and networks, these works take shape within the very spaces they examine. They seek to explore the kinds of experiences and situations these environments produce. Created specifically for these media, they draw directly on the viewer’s habits and points of reference, without having to simulate digital environments.