May 05, 2026

The Medium Always Survives Its Own Funeral

11 minutes

The companion podcast to Issue No. 76 of The Intersect. We sit with a question that refuses to stay still: if photography keeps surviving every medium that was supposed to kill it, is it actually the thing we thought it was — or something stranger and more stubborn? Listen before you read; the newsletter has the links, the curation, and the full context.

Contents

00:00 Photography's Unending Cycle
00:02 The Return to Old Techniques
00:03 Modern Interpretations of Historical Methods
00:05 The Impact of AI on Photography
00:07 AIPAD's Omission of AI
00:08 Film History and Its Parallels
00:09 Photography's Evolution, Not Death
00:11 Embracing Ambiguity in Art

In this episode

Lartigue's color rebellion and the pattern it set. When Jacques-Henri Lartigue turned to color, purists called it treason. Chelsea and Georgia trace how that moment rhymes uncomfortably well with arguments happening right now — and what it suggests about which side of history tends to look foolish in retrospect.

Cameras optional: the return to pre-lens chemistry. Some photographers working today have quietly put their cameras down and gone back to 18th-century light-sensitive experiments — photograms, expired paper from 1946, iodine-drenched skylights. The question isn't whether it's nostalgic. It's why it feels so urgent right now.

AIPAD's conspicuous silence. Seventy-seven galleries, work stretching back to 1917, and not a word about AI-generated imagery. Chelsea and Georgia weigh whether that's principled confidence or something closer to whistling past a graveyard.

What early film history is quietly telling us. A kaleidoscopic Aeon video about forgotten film pioneers lands differently when you're watching visual language shift in real time. The parallels are hard to ignore — and oddly steadying.

Digital Doubles and the pleasure of not knowing. Carlo Zapella's Budapest show mixes analog photographs, 3D renders, and sculpture until you genuinely can't tell which is which. Chelsea and Georgia find it less unsettling than liberating — and maybe a preview of where photography goes from here.

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