INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICS AND PRACTICES OF COMPUTATIONAL SEEING

Abstract

The development and refinement of contemporary machine vision technologies has relied centrally on the volume of photographic images uploaded, labeled, and circulated online. These images have provided the foundational data, and in some cases have solicited the human labour, required to develop sophisticated techniques for automated object recognition, image classification, and semantic segmentation. Reciprocally, machine vision is also transforming established ways of thinking about and practicing photography, by enabling new forms of image analysis, manipulation, and creation, and expanding formulations and applications of the ‘photographic’ image. This special issue of photographies is devoted to an examination of how photography is reshaping machine vision, and how machine vision is reshaping photography. Bringing together grounded studies and critical engagements with existing scholarship, each article examines the means through which photographic images and practices are being put to use in advancing the aims and potential applications of machine vision. In so doing, they leverage the photographic — broadly conceived — to develop greater insight into the emerging politics and practices of computational seeing. In what follows, we offer a brief consideration of emergent and historical convergences of machine vision and photography followed by a sweeping review of recent photographic discourse that contends with the contemporary media situation. Drawing these discussions together, we suggest key thematic areas of analysis that have begun to define critical engagement with the intersection of photography and machine vision, indicating how the articles in this special issue contribute to these developing discourses.