Latent (2024)
1/1/80 Pairs
Digital Negatives (Ethereum)
Silver Gelatin Prints (B&W Baryté Paper,
Ilford 310g)
October 2024
Collaborators: PICTO, LaCollection, Beyond Art Creative, Gary Powell
"Latent" explores the intersection of AI-generated imagery and traditional photography, challenging notions of creativity and authorship by treating digital negatives as primary artifacts, translating the surrealist ethos into the digital age through both machine learning and analog processes.
Latent will be exhibited at Paris Photo on November 7—10 2024, marking the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist movement, in the city of its inception.
At its core, Latent engages with photography’s essential preoccupations: time, minimalism, and the invisible. Parallel to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment,” Butcher extends this exploration into the realm of the machine—a space where creativity unfolds in the abstract and multidimensional.
The neural network’s latent space, a high-dimensional representation of visual possibilities, becomes the subject of inquiry. The model navigates this space through text prompts, synthesizing thousands of outputs, from which less than 1% were selected.
Latent is not merely an exercise in digital generation; it actively interrogates the boundaries between human creativity and machine intelligence. The decision to translate these digital images into physical prints using traditional darkroom techniques reinforces the work’s connection to photographic history, while simultaneously questioning notions of originality.
LATENT — 80 Digital Negatives on Ethereum
Each physical artwork is paired with its digital twin in negative form, the dual works functioning as an inversion of the photographic process.
The use of the negative, often seen as a precursor to the “true” image, inverts this relationship, suggesting that the digital might serve as the original, with the physical as its reproduction.
This treatment also reflects Butcher’s signature Visualize Value aesthetic of white on black, reinforcing the conceptual tension between form and substance while maintaining the minimalist clarity that defines his broader body of work.
LATENT — 80 Silver Gelatin Prints by PICTO, Bastille, Paris
The historical resonance is unmistakable. The invention of photography in the 19th century sparked heated debates about artistic authorship, authenticity, and the mechanical reproduction of images. Today, AI-generated art faces a similar scrutiny, as both critics and creators grapple with what it means for a machine to “create.”
Butcher’s Latent acknowledges this parallel, positioning itself within this lineage of technological disruption. Where once the camera challenged the notion of what it meant to be an artist, today neural networks push the conversation further, questioning the very limits of human imagination.
Created by Jack Butcher, curated by Marlene Corbun, and produced by Martin Klipp, Latent comprises 80 unique works that blend machine learning with traditional photographic printing. Exhibited during the centenary of surrealism in Paris, the project embodies surrealism’s spirit of challenging reality and extending the possibilities of the mind. Butcher’s vision, at once cerebral and accessible, deftly situates itself in the ongoing dialogue between past and future, digital and physical, real and imagined.
The multisensory nature of the exhibition is further enriched by Sonic Duality, an original composition by Gary Powell of The Libertines. Powell’s music, created specifically for Latent, translates the project’s exploration of the creative dialogue between AI and human artistry into a hauntingly resonant auditory experience. The interplay between visual and sonic elements further shapes the exhibition, turning the space into a canvas for both sound and image.
Enquiries: marlene.corbun@lacollection.io
